National Commission on Teaching and America's Future Press Conference

Congresswoman Juanita Millender-McDonald

REMARKS COMMEMORATING THE 50th ANNIVERSARY OF BROWN VS THE BOARD OF EDUCATION

At the

NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TEACHING AND AMERICA'S FUTURE PRESS CONFERENCE

May 13, 2004

Today, I am pleased to join with the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future to pay homage to the momentous impact of the Brown vs Board of Education decision on our society. Our nation's history, and indeed the history of African American and other traditionally underrepresented minorities was forever altered by this decision made on May 17, 1954.
A group of thirteen courageous parents took part in a class action suit filed against the Board of Education of Topeka Public Schools, and in doing so pledged to seek better educational opportunities for their children. During this time in our nation's history, public education was not as extensive as it is today in terms of curriculum content or even the length of the school year.

Further, schooling for African American children living in the South was practically non-existent, and was even prohibited by
law in some states.

That is why the Brown decision reverberated so deeply throughout the South and indeed throughout the entire nation. We must remember that the Brown decision finally moved us away from Plessy vs Ferguson, when the Supreme Court upheld racial segregation in public places including schools so long as "separate but equal" facilities were provided.

However, although the Brown decision was certainly one of the most crucial Supreme Court decisions of the last century, it did not abolish school desegregation on its own. It took the dogged persistence of committed individuals and civil rights organizations to push back on school officials with the support of the federal government and forced them to comply with the law.

About fifteen years passed after the Brown decision in 1954 before Southern schools were truly desegregated, and in my home state of California, the segregated educational system also remained for some time after the 1954 decision.
Following the Brown decision, many schools in the upper South began the process of desegregating their schools, but in the Deep South, resistance to change was strong. An opinion poll taken at the time showed that up to 80% of Caucasian Southerners opposed desegregation efforts.

The lack of a clear deadline for enforcing the desegregation of schools was an issue, and the Supreme Court mandated on May 31, 1955 that school desegregation should proceed with "all deliberate speed." Such language frustrated African Americans and other civil rights supporters and caused opponents of desegregation to emerge in the form of the White Citizen's Council and the Ku Klux Klan.

The resulting increase in violent attacks against African Americans was not enough to deter young African American students like the Little Rock Nine from seeking access to a better education for themselves. We can look back on the struggles of these determined African American students as a turning point not only in expanding educational access for all, but also as a defining moment in this nation's civil rights movement.

We have made considerable progress in terms of dismantling segregation in our nation, but we continue to face new challenges in terms of meeting the educational needs of our ever-changing population. In this spirit, I introduced H.R. 2880, the Foster Care Mentoring Act of 2003 at the beginning of this session to support programs providing mentoring services to children living in foster care.

I am gratified to have lived through the changes brought on by the Brown decision to our nation's schools and indeed our way of life, and I am dedicated to pursuing even higher standards of quality education for our students of all ages.