Throughout the month of February, public schools will be celebrating Black History Month, a time set aside to recognize and appreciate the contributions made by African Americans and other blacks to the American culture.

Also, beginning in 2004, America has been celebrating 50 years of the movement toward equality in public education with the 50th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared the practice of separating whites and blacks in “segregated” schools unconstitutional.

I'm ashamed to say it, but more than half of the high school students I surveyed have never heard of this momentous legal decision that changed everything for American students.

Back in 1954, America had many discrimination issues preventing blacks from being able to attend “white” public schools. We have come a long way since then. Today, people from different races have formed strong, lasting relationships, not letting their races get in the way. I’m not saying everything is perfect because it's not. We still have a lot of discrimination going on today, but things were a lot different in 1954. If you’re one of the many teens who don’t know about how things began to change in 1954, read on.

It all started with a little girl by the name of Linda Brown who lived in Topeka, Kansas. At the time, the public schools were segregated, and Linda was forced to attend a black school miles away from her home though another elementary school, reserved for whites only, sat only a few blocks away. Linda’s father decided to sue Topeka's school board to change the rule.

Lawyers representing the Browns argued that the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing Americans equal justice, required the law to protect all Americans regardless of race. If the law guaranteed white children a public education, then it had to provide black children with the same education. Separating whites and blacks under segregation laws instead ensured that there would be no equality. The Supreme Court agreed and ruled that all public schools had to remove laws allowing segregation of schools.

While the Brown vs. Board of Education decision put the power of the law behind desegregation, it took more than 20 years for many schools to really begin to show ethnic diversity. Activists and legal experts worked for the rest of their lives after the Brown decision to overcome both the outward and the less obvious attempts to stall desegregation of the schools.

One argument regarding the lack of equality between “white” and “black” schools was that white schools received more money than black schools. White schools had better books, better teachers and better facilities. Some black schools in the 1930s, for example, barely had walls. This situation was supposed to be abolished under Brown. Has it been?

In some ways, yes, but in other ways, no. It is now said that, through federally funded programs, more money is going to low-performing, high-minority schools that haven't yet brought all students to the same achievement level. Year after year, tests scores have shown that black students fall behind white students in reading and math, and Hispanic students are doing even worse than blacks. Many politicians and educators believe that this continuing inequality is not the result of school segregation, but social and economic conditions outside the schools. Equality advocates argue that the end result is the same: Minority students are still deprived of their rights to equal educational opportunity.

In Clark County, the battle for equal opportunity in schools began in 1968 when a lawsuit was filed saying that school district policies created segregated elementary schools. While high schools in the county had achieved racial diversity, elementary schools had not. Most of the elementary students attended schools near their homes through district zoning policies. Children who lived in mostly “white” neighborhoods attended mostly “white” schools, and the same was true for blacks.

The outcome of the case in Clark County was a court-monitored plan that required all black students in grades one through five to be bused to the mainly white schools throughout the county. Schools in black neighborhoods were turned into “sixth grade centers” and all students in sixth grade were bused to these centers from all over town to ensure a racial balance at these schools. No school was allowed to have any grade with more than 60 percent black students.

Although this was one solution to the problem, it wasn't received well because it called for students to be taken from their neighborhoods and sent into areas far from their homes. Ultimately, parents and students were forced to comply, and over time, the district satisfied the court plan, and in 1977, CCSD was declared to be desegregated by the court.

In 1992, the district replaced the sixth grade centers with middle schools and adopted a magnet school program to promote diversity in schools. Instead of forcing white students to attend school in “black” neighborhoods by busing them there, the district offered exceptional magnet programs that made students want to attend the school with that program, no matter where it was.

As a result, we now have racially mixed schools in most areas. However, in some schools, high concentrations of minority groups resulting from neighborhood zoning raise diversity concerns. As a remedy, some minority students have been zoned for schools far from their homes, requiring them to ride the bus to school. Another option has been to improve older schools in areas where many minorities live.

The struggle for equal opportunity that took a great leap forward 50 years ago with the Brown decision continues on today. Our generation enjoys opportunities that might not exist if the Brown decision had not happened. Ours will also be the next generation to carry on that struggle and perhaps make the dream real at last.

-Return to February 2005 Issue-