Brown v. Board and Reparations: What We Can Learn From Children Who Chose the Black Doll

• In Event: Brown and Beyond: Studies in Desegregation

Abstract

Since Brown, white flight, inequality in employment, and exclusionary housing practices have led to the re-segregation and conditions of inequality that mirror the pre-Brown era (Orfield, 2011; Reardon, Grewal, Kalogrides, & Greenberg, 2012). These conditions of segregation and inequality undergird the thesis that segregation damages the psyche of Black children.
This research brings to the fore the lives and experiences of those participants in the doll experiment in South Carolina who exhibited wholeness and a sense of self-worth even in the face of a segregated society. Their stories have been dismissed and omitted from our understanding of the Jim Crow era. I aim to address this omission by examining participants’ lives and family background that may account for doll choices.

Author

• Lynette Parker