Fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, the struggle continues

04/13/04 -- "It was wild and chaotic," and "the mob was yelling and cursing" on that day in 1957 when Terrence Roberts and eight other African-American students tried to enter the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Ark.

Roberts, one of the "Little Rock Nine," spoke about his experiences at the NSBA Annual Conference as part of NSBA's efforts to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court ruling, Brown v. Board of Education.

Even though the Brown ruling had been handed down in 1954, the white leaders in Little Rock -- and many other communities across the nation -- strongly resisted efforts to integrate the schools. It took courageous efforts by Roberts and the eight other black teenagers to attempt to enter Central High in the face of what Roberts calls "tremendous opposition." The nine former students were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999 for their efforts to promote civil rights.

"We were volunteers," Roberts told the audience at the March 29 General Session. "The school board had put forth a desegregation plan and asked for volunteers from the black community."

Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus called out the National Guard, and Roberts thought they would protect him so he began to feel safer. Then the National Guard blocked the way. The mob was getting so dangerous, Roberts decided the best thing to do was "get out of there."

The governor closed all public schools for three weeks. When they reopened, attempts by Little Rock police officers to protect the black students failed. Eventually, President Eisenhower called in members of the 101st Airborne Division to escort the Little Rock Nine to school and to guard them throughout the rest of the school year.

"We were threatened the whole year," Roberts recalls. White students "assigned personal tormentors to us. They would hit us, push us into lockers, curse and spit on us, and run off." The troops guarding him "had to decide whether to run after that one or protect this one."

"People were totally convinced they were doing the right thing," Roberts says. "I totally understand that psyche" -- that whites felt they were entitled. "They were trying to protect a way of life."

Before the Brown decision, it was constitutional to discriminate, he says. The Supreme Court had upheld the doctrine of separate but equal in Plessy v. Ferguson. "That's why Brown was so significant," he says. "It turned over Plessy."

Roberts says he got a good education at Central High -- "not in terms of academics but in terms of survival 101."

Roberts is co-chair of the master's in psychology program at Antioch University. He also is a desegregation consultant for the Little Rock school board, but expects that job will be ending soon, as the school district has recently been released from its court-ordered desegregation plan. The student population of Central High is now virtually all African-American and Latino.

Roberts says this country has still not mastered the will or courage needed to confront the issue of racism. As a result, "kids of color suffer greatly."

"We know how to educate children," he says. "But while elite students get a good education, those on the bottom rung don't." He urges the nation to take to heart the words of a bumper sticker he saw recently: "If you think education costs a lot, try ignorance."

Several other speakers at the NSBA Conference also discussed the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education.

At a session sponsored by the Council of Urban Boards of Education, Theodore M. Shaw, deputy director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said the struggle for integration is far from over.

As school board members commemorate the 50th anniversary of Brown, Shaw told urban school leaders they should realize that the federal government, the courts, and the public are not putting a high priority on school integration and classroom diversity.

"If you think the struggle is over, think again," he says. "There are still fundamental issues we have to ask about where we're going as a nation, about what we believe in our core as a nation, and about our status as either a segregated society or one that is desegregated, integrated, and that draws upon our diversity."

Over the years, as many school systems have won release from court desegregation orders and parents have pushed for a return to neighborhood schools, Shaw says, the nation's schools have steadily resegregated.

At the same time, he says, the courts have become increasingly hostile to traditional strategies to encourage school integration and, in some cases, have forced school boards to accept unitary status against their wishes.

"Even the most innocuous desegregation measures have been struck down as illegal and unconstitutional," Shaw says. "It's a mentality where mere race consciousness is racism. It turns fact and history on its head, and it's Orwellian."

There is little leadership from the departments of education and justice despite the political rhetoric in support of school integration, he says. "There is a deafening silence in Washington, D.C., to attacks on voluntary desegregation measures."

At a conference session sponsored by the Council of School Attorneys, William T. Trent, a professor of educational policy studies at the University of Illinois at Champaign, recalled his experiences with the integration struggle.

He was a 10-year-old student in a segregated school in Richmond, Va., when the Supreme Court ruled in Brown. He was 13 when he watched the governor of Virginia announce that schools in the state would be desegregated "over my dead body."

"I remember the adults talking about what 'all deliberate speed' meant and how many of them knew that would mean they may never see their schools desegregated," Trent says. Virginia did not begin full desegregation efforts until 1967.

Trent's research shows inequalities still exist. For example, he found African Americans and other minorities are less likely to have a broad selection of advanced courses in their schools.

The legacy of the Brown decision extends far beyond issues of race and has an impact on many issues and challenges school boards face today, said participants in a Focus on Education session hosted by NSBA Executive Director Anne L. Bryant and American Association of School Administrators Executive Director Paul Houston.

The panelists discussed how the quest for equality that led to Brown has since been expanded to include the quest for access through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and to the goal of "universal proficiency" in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

E. Jane Galluci, president of the Pinellas County, Fla., school board, and newly elected secretary-treasurer of NSBA, says her district is engaged in an effort to figure out how to confront the seemingly conflicting NCLB mandates with a court mandate overseeing the district's move to a unitary status.

"We have come a long way," Galluci says, "but there is a long way to go."