Resources

Part 1

Follow the Development of School Desegregation Law from Brown v. Board and Freedom of Choice to Mandated Unitary School Systems through full text of court opinions and NAACP Legal Defense Fund Pleadings (in chronological order)

• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) (Brown I)
• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 349 U.S. 294 (1955) (Brown II)
• Briggs v. Elliott, 132 F.Supp. 776 (E.D.S.C. 1955)
• Complaint, Wright v. Board (July 2, 1964)
• Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, 391 U.S. 430, May 27, 1968
• Objections to Alachua County plan, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, March 19, 1969, Wright v Board
• Alexander v. Holmes County Bd. of Educ., 396 U.S. 1218 (Sept. 5, 1969)
• Alexander v. Holmes County Bd. of Educ., 396 U.S. 19 (Oct. 29, 1969)
• Singleton v. Jackson Mun. Separate School Dist., 419 F.2d 1211 (5th Cir. Dec. 1, 1969)
• Motion for Injunction Requiring Immediate Plan for Alachua County, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, US Supreme Court, Dec. 13, 1969
• Carter v. West Feliciana Parish School Bd., 396 U.S. 226 (Dec. 13, 1969)
• Carter v. West Feliciana Parish School Bd., 396 U.S. 290 (Jan. 14, 1970)
• Florida School Desegregation Consulting Center, Alachua County Plan (Jan. 3 and 26, 1970)
• Order, Wright v. Board, Apr. 24, 1970
• Wright v. Board of Public Instruction of Alachua County, 431 F.2d 1200 (5th Cir. Aug. 4, 1970)

Opinions in Briggs v. Elliott, Singleton v. Jackson Mun. Separate School Dist., and Wright v. Board of Public Instruction of Alachua County are reprinted from Westlaw with permission of Thomson Reuters.  Material should not be further distributed.  If you wish to check the currency of any material using KeyCite in Westlaw, then you may do so my visiting https://westlaw.com.

Part 2

Dealing with In-School Violence after Desegregation, Full Text Contemporary Reports

• Pilot Year Report, Mountain Top School, Alachua County 1971
• Report, Southeastern States Conference on In-School Violence, March, 1971

Part 3

The Debate Among Black Scholars Related to Desegregation, Full Text of Selected Articles Referenced in We Can Do It

• Du Bois, Does the Negro Need Separate Schools, 4 J. Negro Educ. 328 (1935)
• Locke, The Dilemma of Segregation, 4 J. Negro Educ. 406 (1935)
• Thompson, Court Action the Only Reasonable Alternative to Remedy Immediate Abuses of the Negro Separate School, 4 J. Negro Educ. 419 (1935)
• Bell, Serving Two Masters, Integration Ideals and Client Interests in School Desegregation Litigation, 85 Yale L.J. 470 (1976)
• Correspondence, NAACP Special Contribution Fund and Derrick Bell, 86 Yale L.J. 378 (1976)
• Carter, The NAACP’s Legal Strategy Against Segregated Education, 86 Mich. L. Rev. 1083 (1988)

The articles from Yale Law Journal are included by permission of Yale Law Journal.  The article from Michigan Law Review is included by permission of Michigan Law Review and The Hon. John W. Carter.  Material may not be further distributed.

Part 4

Recent Reports and Community Goals Related to Alachua County

1. Understanding Racial Inequity in Alachua County

Published January 12, 2018, by the University of Florida Bureau of Economics and Business Research and request of community leaders representing Alachua County, Alachua County Public Schools, Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce, Santa Fe College, UF Health, and the University of Florida.

2. The May, 2017, report on the Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce Alachua County Education Compact

The compact represents the commitment of 28 key community leaders, including the President of the University of Florida, to six goals:  (1) graduate from high school, (2) Have access to and are prepared for College and/or Career Success, (3) Have access to pathways to sustainable jobs and careers, (4) develop an appreciation for the arts, (5) Develop healthy lifestyle habits, and (6) Develop a sense of social responsibility.  This annual report describes efforts toward those goals during 2016, and states the policy of continuous improvement.  The key activities in 2016 included enhancing collaboration among community resources, supporting high quality teaching and learning in classrooms and other learning environments, supporting innovative programs to enhance the compact’s goals, and coordinating advocacy of programs related to funding and educational policy issues at the K-20 level.

3. Florida College Access Network:  The Goal 2025 Report:  A scan of relevant local college readiness, access and completion data (May 2015) for Alachua County

This report contains baseline data related to college performance of Alachua County high school graduates, and shows racial disparities.

Part 5

Some Questions for Discussion:

• When did your community convert from a dual to a unitary system?  Was the conversion court-ordered or voluntary?  What were the immediate impacts on black and white communities?  What did your community do to prepare and manage the transition?  What efforts were effective, and what efforts were not effective?
• If your community was not previously segregated de jure, when did desegregation occur, if at all?  What were the immediate impacts on black and white communities?  What did your community do to prepare and manage the transition?  What efforts were effective and what efforts were not effective?
• Did desegregation help or hurt the African Americans in your community?
• Do you agree or disagree with the African American leaders who began advocating for university and public school desegregation in the 1930s?
• Could the South’s separate black schools have been preserved and made equal to the white schools?  Would the two communities have supported such a solution?  Could the Southern economy have supported a dual school system?  Assuming that it was unconstitutional to exclude blacks by law from white schools, how feasible would it have been to continue operating the historically black public schools?
• To what extent do students and teachers in your school try to create situations in which students and teachers of both races cooperate on key projects or endeavors, such as sports, dramatics, music, classwork, or others?
• Are there racially isolated schools in your school system?  Do those schools have resources equal to the majority-white schools (buildings, books, extracurricular and sports programs, laboratories, highly motivated and skilled teachers, others)?

For Teachers:

• On the basis of your postgraduate experience, what should be the three most important goals of teachers colleges today?  Are those goals being implemented by your teachers college?
• How do you define “achievement gap?”  What is the extent of the achievement gap between certain minorities and other racial/ethnic groups in your school system?  What actions, if any, are being taken specifically to narrow the achievement gap?  Are those actions helping?