The Brown decision as living history

Sahara Holmes, a sixth-grade student with skin the color of caramel and gray-green eyes, explains the historic Brown vs. Board of Education school desegregation decision in this way: “It was a lawsuit a man brought because his daughter wasn’t able to go to a school near their home.”

She doesn’t mention that Linda Brown was black or that the school closest to her home in Topeka, Kan., was for whites only. Or that back then, 50 years ago, Negro children routinely attended segregated schools housed in inferior buildings, often used ancient textbooks handed down from white schools, and rarely prospered from the same expectations as their white peers.

She doesn’t mention race until asked what she and her classmates at Bon View Elementary School in Ontario learned from a recent panel discussion at UCLA on the decision handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court on May 17, 1954.

“You don’t need a white person to sit next to you to be able to learn math and language arts and social studies,” Sahara explains. “I learned how to improve my language arts and I am trying to improve my math, and I don’t need a white person to sit next to me.”

Her teacher, Paul Hardy, prods: Would it make a difference if one did sit next to her?

No, she says.

As it happens, there are no white students in this class, which is largely Latino with a smattering of African Americans and two Asian Americans, due to residential and economic segregation.

As the children snack on apple slices and pieces of banana in an after-school program, Mr. Hardy interprets: “Sahara would say as long as they have the facilities, as long as they have the books, as long as they have the great teachers, it doesn’t make a difference.”

That was not the norm when the high court unanimously ruled that racially separate schools were “inherently unequal.” At that time -- and not only in the South -- whiteness often determined quality. African Americans, nearly 90 years after the 13th Amendment had abolished slavery, remained, with few exceptions, relegated to the worst neighborhoods, the worst schools and the worst jobs.

The Brown decision, a catalyst for change, albeit deliberately slow, was part of a civil rights revolution that would open schools and housing, restaurants and public bathrooms and, ultimately, prestigious jobs.

Achievement gap

The progress, though substantial, would not be universal.

“I learned that there are still many segregated schools around the world,” Cristina Goyenche says. “Some schools will contain more whites than other-colored people. Whites and people of color are still separated even though they should be together.”

Do these students consider their school a segregated school?

No, answers Brandon Reyes. There’s no forced segregation, no law banning racial mixing, in this case among racial and ethnic minorities.

Yet the students also learned that an achievement gap remains, in general, between the test scores of white and Asian students and black and Latino students.

Why?

“When I heard that Asian and white kids study more,” Sahara says, “I thought maybe if I stopped going outside and watching TV and listening to the radio and studied more, I would understand more and get better grades.”

Mr. Hardy praises her insight.

Dynamic, charismatic and demanding, he is the kind of teacher who floods a paper with red ink without leaving blood on the floor. His mantra is: “You can do it.” How? Keep your mind focused, he says, make a plan.

Using newspapers in his classroom, he introduces subjects such as global warming and the war in Iraq; he also plans to address the federal government’s recent reopening of the murder investigation of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago who was killed in 1955 while visiting relatives in Mississippi after he whistled at a white woman.

“When the room is segregated voluntarily, there are certain things we can address,” he says later. “If I had all white students in here, I would focus on different things.”

On this afternoon, the focus is on the results of the Brown decision.

He guides the students as they talk about a time when black trailblazers who integrated elementary, junior high and high schools were spit on, and needed -- the students chime in -- “strength, power, courage, restraint, knowledge, endurance and determination.”

How, he asks, have the students benefited personally?

“The colleges aren’t just white anymore. You have other races going to college. They have some open doors for people like me to go on to college, but first I have to put in the effort, the performance, the grades,” Onyinyechukwu Udeogaranya says. He wants to be a physician or a public leader and, like every student in this classroom, intends on attending college.

To reinforce the concept of legal segregation, Mr. Hardy asks Tiffany English how she would feel if someone told her she couldn’t go to college.

“If they said I couldn’t go because of my race, I would be mad and try to prove them wrong,” she answers.

Mr. Hardy tells the class that he was 2 years old at the time of the Brown decision, and naturally the children are curious.

Brandon asks, “Were you in a segregated school or a segregated classroom?

Onyinyechukwu wants to know, “Were you put down by your teachers or did your teachers approve of you?”

Tiffany raises her hand. “Was there any racism toward you, and if so, did you ever stand up and say anything?

Their teacher tells them, “During the ‘50s, it was a different time in this country. So people had a promise that things would really be different. Teachers and parents had a positive outlook.

“I was born into segregation in a Negro hospital in New Orleans. Most places in the South were very segregated,” he says, explaining the difference between voluntary segregation, like when girls stick with girls and boys stick with boys, and the forced segregation of his early childhood.

His inspiration: “I could do something better than my father. My father had a difficult time. He was born in Mississippi; my mother was born in Louisiana. That’s why they moved to California.”

Beyond the put-downs

But at public schools in Oakland and San Francisco, Mr. Hardy says, he could not escape segregated classrooms or teachers who didn’t believe in his ability.

“Sure, I had some teachers who put me down, who didn’t think I could do it because they didn’t know any better,” he says, telling the children that in those situations “you take the good, identify the bad and don’t let that creep into your personality. Although the teachers put me down and put other students down, what was the motivation behind the put-down? Maybe the teacher didn’t know the culture.”

“I have been in a segregated classroom and achieved in it. I have been in an integrated school and achieved in it,” he says. Everyone can. “If they say Mexicans can’t learn, who are ‘they’? What do ‘they’ know? ‘They’ don’t know me.”

They don’t know Sahara Holmes, who observes, “Our textbooks only have two chapters on Africa and Egypt. They only have one chapter on Mesoamericans And they have lots of chapters on Europeans and Greeks.”