Schools, Segregation, and Racial Justice in the Great Society and Post–Great Society Eras

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

The session explores the relationship between federal social policy, school desegregation, and African American antiracist activism the 1960s and 1970s. It features new historical work on two interrelated questions: How did advocates of racial justice conceptualize the promise and limits of school desegregation in the decade following the Civil Rights Act? How did antiracists think about the relationship between schooling and the other social programs necessary for fostering racial justice and equality? Taken together these papers point to the chorus of questions advocates of equal opportunity and equal educational opportunity faced in the Great Society, Civil Rights, and Black Power Eras. Papers also highlight the space between ideas circulating among social scientists and questions of implementation.

Sub Unit

• Division F - Historical Inquiry in Education

Chair

• Leah N. Gordon, Amherst College

Papers

• "I've Gone Black Power": Debating School Integration Versus Separation During the Black Power Era - Zoe Burkholder, Montclair State University

• Can Integrated Schools Equalize Society? Debating Christopher Jencks's Inequality (1972) in the Black Power Era - Leah N. Gordon, Amherst College

• More Than Cookies and Crayons: Head Start's Importance in Mississippi's Black Freedom Struggle - Crystal R. Sanders, The Pennsylvania State University

• "On the Ground of Race": Defining Integration in Project Head Start - Gretchen Aguiar