Legacies of Brown

This book illuminates the effects of segregation, desegregation, and integration on students, practitioners, communities, and policymakers in the fifty years since the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling.

Articles by leading legal and education scholars address questions that are central to the Brown rulings' complex and immensely influential legacy: Has the promise of Brown been realized for all students in public schools? What effects, both positive and negative, have occurred throughout educational communities in the United States as a result of this court decision? How has the process of integration fared in the educational outcomes of African American, Latino, Asian American, Native American, and immigrant youth?

In an essay written expressly for this volume, Harvard Law Professor Martha Minow offers her assessment of what has changed, and not, in the decades since Brown. Additional contributions from leading scholars offer a broad range of views on this complex and contested territory. A first group of articles focuses on desegregation policies and legal issues. Another section of essays examines the educational effects of integration policies on a wide range of racial and ethnic groups. As these latter articles clearly suggest, the implementation and consequences of integration policies in U.S. schools have turned out to be far more complex and various than the education community ever imagined in 1954.

Both timely and of enduring significance, Legacies of Brown is a unique contribution to our current reassessment of the Brown decision and its many consequences for American education and society.