Since the 1970s, federal court orders have governed how many Southern communities integrated their public schools. But new research shows, as those orders have been lifted, school districts are gradually re-segregating. But why?
In the second installment of our series “Segregation Shifts,” the SED’s Alabama reporter Dan Carsen goes back in time to examine a strategy whites once used to sidestep public school integration, one that still shapes communities today — so-called “segregation academies”:
In this Birmingham’s historic Kelly Ingram Park, there’s a statue of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. One of the names on the stone pedestal is Robert Corley. Among other things, Dr. Corley teaches history at UAB. He was a founding member of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute board and has served on the city school board. SED reporter Dan Carsen recently sat down with him while researching stories for our School Resegregation series. Corley says today’s students are missing some vital history on the subject.
Schools around the country close in remembrance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But schools in the Deep South are also observing the birthday of Confederate General, Robert E. Lee. Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia and Alabama all officially roll the holidays together and leave it to schools to communicate the confusing marriage to students.
At one point in time, during the days of slavery, Reconstruction, and the Jim Crow era, education was seen as the best means to combat a racist society, to provide for greater economic opportunity, and to rebuild our communities by empowering and educating others. We have to find a way to make education of value again.
U.S. District Judge Ivan Lemelle has issued a temporary injunction, prohibiting the State of Louisiana from implementing the voucher program in Tangipahoa Parish because he believes it conflicts with a desegregation case consent decree.