The Challenge of Teaching Brown
"Did
Brown really desegregate schools?" This is the question that inevitably
is asked when we begin our study of Brown v. Board in my graduate level
survey class, The History of Education in the
United States.
Certainly, it is a valid question,
but one that is problematic when one tries to reconcile the goals of the
landmark case with the large number of segregated schools that exist today.
When students compare how many segregated schools exist today with those of
1954, the simple answer, according to them, appears to be that Brown did
not desegregate schools. It is the complexity of addressing this issue that
makes teaching Brown a challenge. Pedagogically I should welcome the
opportunity to teach such an issue that has no easy conclusion. As a result, it
has the power to engage and challenge students in complex ways. Yet, there is a
part of me that dreads teaching Brown because I fear that I cannot do
justice to the enormity of that decision for the United States in 1954, nor to
the significance that it has taken on in the ensuing decades. However, even
with these challenges, how could I not teach Brown?
From the outset I want to make clear that this is a
reflective as opposed to directive piece. I certainly do not believe that I
have a lock on the best way to teach Brown. Instead, I would like this
essay to reflect my own uncertainty about what is pedagogically most effective.
Students want to understand the significance of Brown because it is such
a part of our popular historical culture, yet it is difficult to document the
way in which Brown has changed schooling. It is especially important for
students to understand the context of the time and thus the significance of the
Supreme Court's decision in 1954. To correct the notion that "one day the Brown
family decided to sue," we begin our study of Brown in the decades before
1954. During the first half of the twentieth century, one of the goals of the
legal arm of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) was to eliminate Jim Crow laws and overturn the doctrine of "separate
but equal," established in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). It became evident
that education would provide the ideal means for challenging these laws. School
expenditures were clearly not equal, as white schools were often funded at ten
times the level of black schools in the same communities. Three cases in the
1930s and 1940s – Hocutt v. North Carolina, Murray v. University of
Maryland Law School, and Gaines v. Canada in Missouri – provided the
building blocks, in part, for the NAACP’s success in Brown.
I
assign the Supreme Court decision for students to read and then we spend time in
class looking closely at not only what the document says, but also the way in
which it uses language – particularly as it regards the "hearts and minds of
children." The purpose, in part, is to capture the spirit and intent of Brown.
This is particularly important because the victory went beyond abolishing
segregated schooling and has been used as a template for a plethora of civil
rights cases in the second half of the twentieth century.
I
deliberately emphasize the spirit and intent of Brown, since it is
difficult to ascertain the way(s) in which the decision has changed schooling.
We look at statistics, which show that by 1964 less than 10 percent of the
schools under court ordered desegregation were in compliance. To capture the
resistance of many white southerners to desegregate, I introduce The Southern
Manifesto, and subject it to the same scrutiny that we gave the Brown
decision. To end class, I screen the second chapter of Eyes on the Prize
that focuses on Central High, the Little Rock Nine, and James Meredith's
struggle to gain admission to the University of Mississippi. When the final
scenes fade and the VCR is turned off, there is a heavy silence in the
classroom. Now that the desire and struggle for equal education has been
humanized, how will views change in the room?
I begin the next class by asking the
thoroughly unfair and likely pedagogically unsound question, "Would you have
sent your children to Central High School in 1957?" The responses of my racially
diverse class are quite interesting. Overwhelmingly, black students say they
would not send their children. Many white students take the opposite position,
arguing that their child's attendance would show their support for the
desegregation effort. The reading assignments add greater complexity to the
discussion. On the one hand, students are considering the struggle of black
parents to provide their children an equal education, which might well be in a
white school. On the other hand, both David Cecelski's Along Freedom Road
and Vanessa Siddle Walker's Their Highest Potential argue the benefit of
the segregated black school of the South for the children in those communities.
The discussion becomes more complex,
messier if you will, when the class looks at statistics of northern schools in
the mid 1960s, the issue of segregation is no longer simply a southern concern,
but a national one. It is at this point that we make distinctions between de
jure and de facto segregation: while southern schools were segregated
by law, northern schools were segregated by circumstance. As a result, southern
schools were ordered to desegregate, but northern schools were under no such
edict immediately following Brown. It is interesting to watch my
predominantly tri-state area, mostly liberal graduate students — many of whom
are parents themselves — wrestle with the fact that schools in New York City,
Chicago, and Philadelphia were as segregated, and thus unequal as those in the
south. If, according to the Supreme Court, segregated schools promoted a
feeling of inferiority for children, must not that also be true in the north?
It becomes more difficult to paint the simple line of the "evil segregated
south" without looking at the northern communities, from which most of my
students hail, that were also and in some cases are still segregated. Students
must wrestle with these complex realities set against the backdrop of the
popular history of Brown.
From one pedagogical standpoint, Brown is an excellent teaching tool. It has the potential for lively discussion, challenges what students have known and believed, demands that they look beyond the simply drawn lines of regionalism, of perceived "good and bad," and finally, shows how little resolution or reconciliation there is in complex historical matters. On the other hand, there is no resolution or reconciliation of these issues. It leads to students to wonder – "Why was/is Brown important if schools remained, and are still segregated?" In a sense we are back where we started when we first began our examination. I turn this question back on them challenging them to reflect on why Brown is a landmark case in American history. What becomes clearer is the effect of Brown beyond education and the complexity of interpreting historical events. While these very conclusions and the lack of historical resolution, if you will, are what interest and excite me as a scholar, they are exactly what make me nervous as a teacher. I cannot help but wonder if students leave the course with an understanding of Brown and its historical significance – or if they question "does Brown really matter?"
From "Teaching Brown:
Reflections on Pedagogical Challenges and Opportunities"
History of Education Quarterly 44 (Spring 2004)
Copyright by the History of
Education Society. Reprinted with permission.
Resources:
David Cecelski, Along Freedom Road (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994).
Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality (New York: Vintage Books, 1975).
Eyes on the Prize, Part 2: “Fighting back (1957-1962),” Blackside, Inc., 1986.
Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).