John Thompson: Garland and Carr Remind Us of the Perils of Segregation
Guest post by John Thompson.
One of the greatest flaws of the contemporary accountability-driven school reform movement is its lack of historical awareness. Two great books, Sarah Garland's Divided We Fail, and Sarah Carr's Hope Against Hope, offer a corrective.
Garland's Divided We Fail recounts the rise and fall of school desegregation in Louisville. She reconstructs a time when education was part of the civil rights movement of the 20th century. Civil rights leaders knew that Brown v. Topeka, which outlawed de jure segregation, would not be a silver bullet. They could not have fully anticipated, however, the myriad of ways that white privilege would continue to be protected. Even so, during the 1970s, black student achievement grew at an unprecedented rate - producing gains far greater that those achieved by subsequent "reforms."
By 1996, however, a black student, Dionne Hopson, was not able to attend the high school of her choice, Central High School, even though she was one of only 107 students accepted to that school. She was denied admittance because the district's policy was to limit African American population to 42% at any given school.
One of the greatest flaws of the contemporary accountability-driven school reform movement is its lack of historical awareness. Two great books, Sarah Garland's Divided We Fail, and Sarah Carr's Hope Against Hope, offer a corrective.
Garland's Divided We Fail recounts the rise and fall of school desegregation in Louisville. She reconstructs a time when education was part of the civil rights movement of the 20th century. Civil rights leaders knew that Brown v. Topeka, which outlawed de jure segregation, would not be a silver bullet. They could not have fully anticipated, however, the myriad of ways that white privilege would continue to be protected. Even so, during the 1970s, black student achievement grew at an unprecedented rate - producing gains far greater that those achieved by subsequent "reforms."
By 1996, however, a black student, Dionne Hopson, was not able to attend the high school of her choice, Central High School, even though she was one of only 107 students accepted to that school. She was denied admittance because the district's policy was to limit African American population to 42% at any given school.