"What is the quality of your intent?" ~ Thurgood Marshall

Martin Luther King Jr. and School Desegregation


I know that my beginning quote and the title of the chapter do not match, but it seems remiss to not have some reference to Thurgood Marshall in this blog since he was the driving force behind the landmark court case of Brown vs. Board of Education. After almost 60 years of the court's decision on Plessy vs. Ferguson, which deemed schools could be segregated as long as they were separate but equal, Thurgood Marshall won the court case that helped jump start the Civil Rights Movement. And with this, Martin Luther King Jr. began his journey that he is known for in history.


It is interesting that MLK Jr. only receives a couple of pages dedicated to him in this chapter. Besides being a leader for equal rights, he was a man who inspired many with his non-violent ways. Although his battles seemed to mainly be focused towards political and social equality, some battles did also fall to education. What I gathered from this chapter is that King may not have had any concrete plans for the integration of schools, but his legacy opened the door to the demand for equal rights for all children, no matter their color, race, or intelligence. But this continues into the next chapter...

Back to this chapter...
With the court's decision in 1954 for Brown vs. Board of Education, segregation did not happen immediately, and in some places it did not happen at all for another decade. It wasn't until 1968 did desegregation actually speed up. And, as it seems with everything in education today, it was due to money that desegregation finally hit a fast track. At this time the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare stated that Southern districts would receive federal education funding only if it was obvious that the districts were making clear progress toward integration. So for a few years, districts were making progress toward integration so that they could receive federal aid.


What happened to cause integration to hit a stumbling block was that people, OK mainly white people, began moving out of the cities and school districts and into the suburbs, where most African Americans were unable to move due to cost. This eventually lead to another court case surrounding school segregation, Milliken vs. Bradley (1974). In this case, the Supreme Court made a distinction between the legal segregation that was happening in the South and the happenstance segregation that was occurring in the North (families moving to the burbs). The court ruled that a school board has no obligation to integrate a school that has become segregated due to individual decisions (63). Which, many of us in education already know, caused schools to remain segregated. Perhaps they were not identified officially as segregated, but when looking at the racial composition of the students, it was hard to miss.

What came out of these debates on integration was the decision for a formal survey to occur that researched the effects segregation had on students, both black and white. James Coleman (more about him later in Chapter 9) was chosen to conduct the research...and what he found was not what was expected by those in government offices. Coleman tested 4,000 randomly selected students from across the nation, in various subjects, while also collecting information on the characteristics of the schools the students attended. These characteristics included the racial composition, degrees earned by teachers, the number of books in the school library, etc. He also collected family background information on the students as well (70). So, what did he find?

In his report, which was labeled "Coleman I", Coleman found that the expenditures per pupil were close to the same in black and white schools, in rural, urban, and suburban areas. He also found that students did not learn more because more money and resources were spent on their education, or that the number of students in a class, the teacher's credentials, or the number of books in the library were important. What he did discover to be the most important in the child's education was the family background. The mother and father's education, the family income, having fewer siblings, the number of books in the home--all contributed to the variations in the selected students' reading achievements (71).

What he also discovered was that the social composition of the students at a school affected the student achievement. Meaning, if a lower economic African American student was grouped together with students who were white and from a higher socio-economic status, the African American child performed better. However...the opposite was not found to be true. A white child did not suffer from having lower economic black classmates. It boiled down to integration helped the minority without harming the majority (72).

So, with all this, what was accomplished? I believe that most educators would agree that schools are still segregated, at least to a point. Just looking at my district, there are definite divisions between the four quadrants; the Northeast Heights schools are considered the higher performing, whereas the South Valley Schools are considered lower performing. What is the difference between all the schools? Is the racial composition? Is it the family backgrounds? The parental involvement?

Have schools changed tremendously from the 1960s? Did Martin Luther King's dream come to fruition? Maybe not, but what his impact on education was is he opened the door to the idea that all children deserve an equal education, and that is what the next chapter "The Rights Movement Diversifies" covers...

Peterson, Paul E. "Martin Luther King Jr. and School Desegregation." Saving Schools: from Horace Mann to Virtual Learning. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap of Harvard UP, 2010. Print.



With all this discussion about integration, I wanted to mention a wonderful novel that my students and I read each spring, Mississippi Trial, 1955, by Chris Crowe. It is about the murder of Emmett Till, as told through the eyes of a 16-year-old boy, Hiram, who returns to Mississippi and discovers that everything is not what it seems. The novel mentions segregation and the Brown decision, while also painting a picture of what life was like in the South during this period. Each year the students are amazed to find out that the story of Emmett Till is true; a 14-year-old African American boy was pulled from his bed one night and murdered because he didn't know his place in the South and he whistled at a white woman. The novel helps students see a side of American history that is seldom seen in a textbook, and a side that seems unreal to many students. If you get a chance, read it. If your students are like mine, they will be moved by the novel.