Chapter 4: Educating African American Urban Learners: Brown in Context

The educational rights and opportunities of African American urban learners have been of grave concern to educators, policymakers, and society. The 1954 landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) in Topeka, Kansas, was the most significant school inclusion case, requiring that schools make a “good faith” effort to desegregate schools “with all deliberate speed” (Dooley & Voltz, 1999, p. 19). The intent of Brown was to uphold the Fourteenth Amendment and redefine issues related to equal access of educational programming. This case recognized that separate educational facilities were inherently unequal and unconstitutional. To a large measure, it failed to favor discrimination in school admissions and retention on grounds of race or color. Although this case was supposed to extinguish practices that are discriminatory and protect the educational rights of children and youth, there continues to be the issue of unequal educational programming and policies for African American learners (Dooley & Dooley, 2002).