The "Brown v. Board of Education" (1954) decision was a significant change in social justice and human rights. There is ongoing debate about public education not as a private commodity but as a public good that must be made available on equal terms. Recently, schools are entering an era of second-generation segregation. Poor outcomes,…

There is not much debate regarding the "Brown" decision and the significance of the foundation it provided for access to equal educational opportunity and the school funding litigation movement; however, it is important to recognize that the inception of "Brown" can be traced back to a small rural town in South Carolina. Three…

The history of education for African Americans in the United States is one of struggle largely due to laws that forbade the education of enslaved Africans. Resultingly, education exists in a broader system of oppression. Historically, school desegregation displaced many Black teachers and administrators and ultimately forced Black professionals…

Using research from two eleventh-grade U.S. history classrooms in the San Francisco area, this article examines how students draw on their lived experiences to create historical meanings. Specifically, a three-day lesson on "Mendez v. Westminster" was used as part of a curricular intervention to explore the following question: How do…

In 1969, four years after passage of the Voting Rights Act, African Americans in Greene County, Alabama, reclaimed control of local government, becoming the first community in the South to do so since Reconstruction. A half century later, however, Greene County remains an impoverished and largely segregated area with poor educational outcomes,…

Just a few months after the Supreme Court decided in "Brown v. Board of Education" that segregation in public schools was "inherently unequal" and unconstitutional, a principal from a New York City suburb invited students from several southern schools to see an integrated school in action. Principal Willis Thomson of New…

This dissertation is composed of three papers examining the predictors and consequences of increasing school segregation following widespread release from court ordered desegregation orders. Paper one investigates factors shaping districts' choices to pursue release from desegregation orders. This serves to provide context for papers two and…

Decades after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling banned mandatory race-based separation of students to different schools, school segregation, and inequality in the United States are rapidly increasing. In this research synthesis, I propose a model for explaining how segregation and inequality are formed in urban and suburban school systems and…

The rallying, clarion call to #SayHerName has prompted the United States to intentionally include the lives, voices, struggles, and contributions of Black women and countless others of her ilk who have suffered and strived in the midst of anti-Black racism. To advance a leadership framework that is rooted in the historicity of brilliance embodied…

"Resisting Divide-and-Conquer Strategies in Education: Pathways and Possibilities" examines the ways in which divide-and-conquer strategies operate in the American public education system. In U.S. education, these mechanisms are endemic and enduring, if not always evident. Coordinated, strategic, well-funded, politically-viable campaigns…

More progress is needed to achieve equity in racial and gender representation in the push to diversify the physical sciences. In order to continue moving towards representation and equity, there is a need for more analytic tools that can help us understand where we are and how we got here. This may also enable meaningful systemic change. In this…

This research answers the question, "How did pre-Brown African American school leaders lead their schools?" After conducting a metasynthesis on the leadership practices of pre-Brown African American school leaders, I constructed the Pre-Brown African American School Leadership Paradigm (PAASLP) and model. The PAASLP describes a paradigm…

Nearly 70 years after one of the most important U.S. Supreme Court rulings was handed down in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) declaring segregated schools unconstitutional, the promise of desegregation has remained unfulfilled. However, there are still actions that can be taken to address the extant disparities in schools that exist in large…

The advent of critical race theory (CRT) in legal scholarship changed the way in which legal scholars think about race and racism in at least three ways. First, CRT scholars argue that the problem of racial justice is fundamental to American law, whereas the previous generation of civil rights scholars saw racial justice as a problem of…

"Kappan"'s editor talks with the distinguished historian Vanessa Siddle Walker about the hidden -- and lost -- tradition of political advocacy by Black educational leaders in the segregated South. To promote equity and excellence for all students, she argues, today's educators will need to recover the sorts of extensive and…