In 1955, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that public schools should be racially integrated, and overturned the separate but equal doctrine established in Plessy v Ferguson decades before. This was made possible by a concerted legal...

The story of Barbara Johns and her fellow students fight for school integration resulting in the successful case - Brown v. Board of Education.

Reading Through History: The Great Supreme Court Cases Topeka, KS 1950 Schools were segregated by skin color. Each day, 8-year old Linda Brown and her sister had to walk one mile, crossing several busy railroad tracks along the way, to...

Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in the United States that permitted segregation in everything water fountains to buses to schools. Services were definitely separate in the United States in the first half of the 20th century, but...

Linda Brown was just 9-years-old when she was thrust into the national spotlight, as she fought - and won - against racial segregation in the American school system.

Vanessa Siddle Walker is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of African American Educational Studies (B.A. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; M.Ed Harvard University; Ed. D Harvard University). For 25 years, she has explored the...

Dale Russakoff spent twenty-eight years as a reporter for the Washington Post, covering politics, education, social policy, and other topics. From 1994 to 2008, she served in the Post’s New York Bureau, which included covering the...

What are the student diversity trends in American public schools?



Sandra Graham, University of California Presidential Chair in Education and Diversity and Distinguished Professor of Education at UCLA, discusses student...

This video provides a historical overview of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, highlighting key events and figures that shaped the fight for equal rights. It explores the struggles faced by black Americans during the era of...

In which John Green teaches you about the early days of the Civil Rights movement. By way of providing context for this, John also talks a bit about wider America in the 1950s. The 1950s are a deeply nostalgic period for many Americans,...

Janel George is an Associate Professor of Law and the founding Director of the Racial Equity in Education Law and Policy (REELP) Clinic. Her clinical projects and research focus on the development and implementation of legislative...

Do you remember your first day of school? I do. And I was reminded about that day when learning about the story of the Little Rock Nine. Here's the story of my first day of school and how it was different from the experience of the...

How nine students going to a new school became a national crisis, commanded military intervention and became the focus of international attention.

When the American Civil War ends, the U.S. government enters Reconstruction with three amendments to the Constitution; slavery is abolished and former slaves are granted citizenship and the right to vote. At the state and local level,...

Ruby Nell Bridges Hall is an American civil rights activist.



She is the first African-American child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana during the New Orleans school desegregation...

For decades, the American Dream of owning a house was denied to certain segments of the population... and we are still living with the effects today.

Vanessa Siddle Walker is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of African American Educational Studies (B.A. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; M.Ed Harvard University; Ed. D Harvard University). For 25 years, she has explored the...

Camille Zubrinsky Charles is Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in the Social Sciences, Department of Sociology, Graduate School of Education, and the Center for Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is author...

Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas was only one of many schools being desegregated in accordance with the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was...

Learn how historical and systemic practices, like redlining and housing covenants, have contributed to ongoing housing disparities for Black families in the United States. Discover potential solutions, such as stricter enforcement of the...

The Stockholm Prize in Criminology is the world’s most prestigious award in the field of criminology.  It is awarded to Elijah Anderson, Yale University, USA, for his ethnographic observations and analysis of mechanisms behind violence...

It's been 62 years since Brown v. Board of Education, but the percentage of racially segregated schools in the United States has been growing steadily over the past 15 years. New York has the most segregated schools in the country. We...

Schools in the U.S. are as racially segregated today as they were in