Harrison Blackmond is the Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) Michigan State director.
By Harrison Blackmond
Handed down 60 years ago Saturday, the United States Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education declared unconstitutional state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students. Today, I am celebrating because Brown v. Board of Education’s legacy teaches America what my life has taught me: that though it often plays the long game, education is the guiding light in the darkness on the path to equality.
I was born the son of a sharecropper in a wooden house with a tin roof in rural Alabama. Legal segregation meant that none of my nine older half-siblings had the opportunity to continue their education past middle school, because there weren’t any high schools for black children where we lived. Black boys were expected to drop out of school at 12 or 13 to work.
That was the future that awaited me when I began my education at the segregated Union Hill School in 1950. I walked five miles to get there each day, greeted along the way by the epithets of white students traveling to school by bus. But despite the long journey, despite the jeers, and in spite of the odds, I received a public American education.
My elementary school teachers, all black women, were genuinely committed to making sure I learned the basics. They taught me about Langston Hughes, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, and Frederick Douglass. They introduced me to the world of books. Most of all, they enabled me to believe that I could break free of the status quo.
After second grade, I moved to Cincinnati to live with my sister in a tenement in the city’s West End. Though Brown had come and gone by then, things weren’t much different for black students in Cincinnati public schools. Most of us were placed into the lowest academic track, far from the college-bound white students.
But with good teachers like Ms. King, my 7th grade English teacher, who made sure I was placed in the college preparatory program, I stayed the course. I attended Hughes High School instead of the vocational high school, and, after a stint in the army, the University of Cincinnati and ultimately the University of Michigan Law School.
My education allowed me to do critical civil rights advocacy around the country and eventually brought me to Detroit, where I worked extensively with the Michigan Education Association. I came to understand that public school is the key to opportunity, and that my life is the perfect example. I owe all of my success—as a professional, lawyer, and civil rights activist—to education.
So, what does this mean sixty years after Brown? I have heard over the years that Brown has lost its luster; that though progressives were ecstatic at the time about the Fourteenth Amendment and the federal rejection of the farce that was “separate but equal,” our victory in Brown didn’t mean we had reached equality.
True, the unequal treatment of students—and citizens—based on race continues to this day across the country, and the fight for quality public education for all is far from over. Students of color and those living in poverty continue to receive less educational funding and fewer opportunities than their wealthier, whiter peers. But Michigan’s schools have the potential to make significant progress by enhancing programs that have been proven to reduce achievement gaps based on race and income.
As a child of the segregated south, there weren’t many options available to me there, nor in Cincinnati. But education lit my way and guided me forward, and it can do that and so much more for kids today if we embrace the approaches that work.
We need to have a greater sense of urgency and keep the pressure on both district and public charter schools to meet the challenge of providing every child with a quality education. Sixty years after Brown, we can celebrate the fact that education has the unique ability to lift students out of unfortunate conditions and steer them along the path to success—and I am living proof.
Do you have a guest column on a statewide topic to share? Email statewide community engagement director Jen Eyer at firstname.lastname@example.org.