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Schools Still Segregated 50 Years After Brown Ruling

HeadlineMay 17, 2004

50 years ago today the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that the doctrine of “separate but equal” had no place in the U.S. public schools. The ruling would help spark the civil rights movement and was supposed to lead to the end of government-sanctioned segregation in the country. But many researchers say the ruling has not fully lived up to its promise. The Harvard Civil Rights Project has found school integration–which peaked in 1988 — is now at the same level as it was in 1969. A recent report of theirs concluded, “We are celebrating a victory over segregation at a time when schools across the nation are becoming increasingly segregated.” According to the Harvard Civil Rights Project one in eight southern African-American students attend a school that is 99 percent black. About a third attend schools that are at least 90 percent minority. In the Northeast, more than half of African-Americans attend such schools.

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