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Transformational Resistance and Developing a Critical Consiousness for Students in Their Early Stages of Schooling and Beyond Map of Racial Oppression and Student Movements Across the United States From 1954-2016 This map serves to document the racial oppression of black students of all different educational levels, as well as student movements across the United States. Please click on a landmark and read the description of what took place in that location. For more information on these events, at the end of the brief description where it says "read more" guides you to the section on the website where there is a longer description of that event.

Boy standing up to Segregation

This page is referenced by:

The Myth of Desegregation and Anti Racism in Schools: Unveiling the Racist Ideology That Dominated the Desgregation Movement and Its Affect on Black Students Today
   In the year 1954 The U.S. Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education decision declared that segregated schools were unconstitutional and therefore black students could not be refused enrollment into any once "white segregated school". Under this decision the NAACP supported multiple cases of black students that wanted to attend segregated white schools. In many history courses today, the subject of desegregation is praised as the ultimate(best) effort made for black education, and that the Brown v. Board of Education decision worked to abolish racial oppression in these schools. However, the desegregation movement was not very successful in helping the education of black people, because the movement was driven by this idea that white academia (schooling) was always better than schools organized by black educators.
    It is true that most black segregated schools were underfunded, lacked good facilities, and school supplies due to the fact that these black schools only received government funding from black taxpayer dollars and black community members that donated to individual schools, but there were still some segregated black schools that were better academically than those white segregated schools in the same neighborhood, however that aspect alone did not make black students stop trying to attend these white segregated schools. In Vanessa Siddle Walker's book, Their Highest Potential, she examines the history of one school, CCHS, in Caswell County North Carolina, and finds that in the last years before it was closed to desegregation, it was the best school in the county, but some student's parents still insisted that they attend a segregated white school "so they could get adjusted to being with whites"(Walker, 1996, pg 172). Unfortunately to some parents this plan seemed best for their children and in many ways didn't work because white students, school administrators, parents, white community members, etc. were still heavily against desegregation, and made black students go back to CCHS. Many of the students when they returned were not able to graduate because the white segregated school they transferred to didn't offer as many courses as CCHS and so they missed their requirements to grasuate. CCHS had a better curriculum as well as faculty that were invested in the success of their black students, but this did not stop the closing of this school which was the case for many black schools in the South (Walker, 1996, 174).
    Desegregation was used to enroll black students into segregated white high schools, trusting that their facilities, faculty, administration, school supplies, and curriculum would be better than segregated black schools, this notion lead to the closing of multiple black segregated schools, and the unemployment of black faculty, administration members and principals. The desegregation movement in many ways degraded the existence of black segregated schools, and categorized them as schools where black students were not given a proper education because they were being taught by other black people. When the desegregation movement became more popular, white people began to reinforce this idea by refusing to hire black faculty and administration for integrated schools that had better or the same credentials of those white faculty and administration. In David Cecelski's book, Along Freedom Road, he explains that even though many black schools closed, there were some that were transformed into integrated schools, but when this happened white administrators “would remove plaques or monuments that honored black cultural, political or educational leaders. They hid from public view trophy cases featuring black sports teams and academic honorees”(Cecelski, 1994, pg. 9) These newly integrated schools, worked to erase any accomplishments of the black students in these black segregated schools. As a result of these actions the what Walker calls“national memory” commemorates desegregation for creating black educational advancement and discredits black segregated schools from accomplishing anything. The “national memory” is the dominant narrative of what desegregation did to public schooling, and this national memory does not include the success of black segregated schools or integrated schools erasing their accomplishments to suggest that these schools were nothing before white people were integrated into them.
    The desegregation movement was executed in a way that implied that the academic capacity of black administrators, educators, and students were not to the potential of those in white segregated schools; and a result of this ideology, black students continue to suffer in their desegregated schools today. When schools were desegregated, black students were given the opportunity to transfer to white schools, however these schools did not hire black faculty, and administration members, that would have been committed to the education of black students, instead these students learned under a white administration and faculty that thought of them as not as academically advanced as their white classmates. So much that black students such as Ruby Bridges (1960) and the students of Little Rock Nine(1957) were forced to take entrance exams in order to attend these schools. This ideology of black academic inferiority, grounded in the desegregation movement is what now prevents black students from gaining the same educational opportunities as their white classmates. For example, in a national study conducted in 2016, theorists found “that black students were 54% less likely than their white classmates   to be placed into gifted learning programs” (Weir, 2016, pg 44). In Tyrone C. Howard’s book Why Race and Culture Matter, he explains that both black and latino students are disproportionately more likely to be placed in special education programs because they are “placed into ‘judgement categories’ that are determined less on clinical judgement and more on individuals subjective interpretations”(Howard, 2010, pg. 21) . The educational achievement of black students today, in desegregated schools are still seen as inferior to white students, and because of this notion that black students are deficient, they lack educational opportunities or even assistance from white faculty members in assumption that these students won’t do well anyway.
    Desegregation is something that is positive and that black people fought for continuously, but the racist components that made up the desegregation movement, is why black students are still subject to racial oppression in schools today. In black segregated schools all students “were expected to learn, were encouraged to “speak up” and take initiative”, and black students were given role models of black people in their community that cared about their success, set aside money for them to go to college, inspired them to give back to their own black communities and over all saw potential in these students to grow academically and become successful(Walker, 1996, 174-176) . The desegregation movement was focused on allowing black students to attend white schools and not on changing the minds of white administrators and educators to accommodate these students. When schools today neglect the teaching efforts that black segregated schools made to help black students succeed, it hinders black students because they will not understand that these schools were committed to helping black students unlike most of the integrated schools that are here today.
     Within the Elementary School, Middle School, and High School sections of this website, there are multiple incidents noted where black students are penalized drastically for their actions, physically abused, and neglected by white faculty members and administration members so much that it has highly affected the high school dropout rate of black students, and highly increased the population of black students incarcerated (school-to-prison) pipeline. Integrated schools were mandated by the state, but white faculty members and administration had worked to re-segregate schools ever since integration has been implemented. In order to mask their white supremacist actions towards black students throughout all levels of schooling white administration as well as faculty members have preached the idea of color-blindness, but still compare the educational achievement of black students to white students. With every issue of a zero tolerance policy by the school's administration, every harsh penalty unrightfully given to black students, with every call to the police department because of a black student's behavior, every time a white teacher has physically or verbally abused a black student, is a determined action made to re-segregate the once white segregated schools.
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