Teaching after Brown vs The Board of Education.
( Seen above Ruby Bridges Being escorted to school after Brown vs The Board)
In Toepcia, Kansas on May 17th 1955 is the date that the supreme court that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." One by one schools all across america were forced to suddenly integrate all white schools to accommodate young African Americans were chosen to be the first generation of equal opportunity students.
Thinking of these people and their stories seems like such a distant memory , with movies being produced about little girls and boys like Ruby Bridges, who are known for kick starting this movement. However Mrs Brides is only 65 years old, not ancient history and is still thriving in 2019.
(Modern Picture of Ruby Bridges)
Just like the enigmatic Mrs. Bridges however segregation in schools is not old and long gone, it is unfortunately alive and thriving. It is not necessarily what we think of in terms of segregation, it is not all Rosa Parks on the bus or separate water fountains. Segregation in 2019 looks more like a neighborhood in the ghettos that was one of the few places African Americans could live in in the 20th century so entire family trees blossomed in that area of town and because of a lack of racially accepting and or black run businesses no one could really afford to move out. So schools popped around those neighborhoods to take care of those first generation of occupations children and nothing has changed since then.
People take over jobs and even positions for their parents and buy their parents house so they can retire, and soon you have whole family's feeling locked into the same dead end jobs, in run down neighborhoods with children receiving education in school that are still taught the same way their grandparents were taught in the same un renovated buildings!
But there has been improvement as mentioned in “This American Life”, “ In other words, on standardized reading tests in 1971, black 13 year olds' tested 39 points worse than white kids. That dropped to just 18 points by 1988 at the height of desegregation…...That's all black children in America. Halved in just 17 years. When I asked Nikole if that was fast, she was all like, "Well, black people first arrived on this continent as slaves in 1619. So it was 352 years to create the problem. So yeah, another 17 to cut that school achievement gap in half? Pretty fast."
This is a great improvement from pre integration, however it still does not align with the scores of Caucasian children.
Because even as recently as 2017 schools like Normandy High School , a majority black school lost accreditation because of the “unequal” an disproportionately cared for school system that is still hurting america's youth today.
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