Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education

by Gary Orfield, Susan E. Eaton, Harvard Project on School Desegregation

Through profiles of school districts across the nation, the authors--directors of the Harvard Project on School Desegregation--demonstrate the resegregation of public schooling forty years after the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, History

424 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1996

Reviews

[DW Rowlands]

This book was a very detailed--and quite depressing--history of the legal precedents and arguments that have been used to end court-enforced desegregation in much of the US. The authors argue, emphatically and fairly effectively, that mandatory busing does work, and is the only viable way to desegregate public schools in much of the country, especially given the realities of housing segregation, which are themselves in large part due to historical government action.

It was also an interesting read for me as a DC-area native because it has chapters on school desegregation in Prince George's and Montgomery Counties in particular.

[Randie D. Camp, M.S.]

Read chapter one for class. It offered some insight into what wrong with the implementation of "Brown". It also shed some light on the issues regarding schools/districts declaring "unitary status".

The reading was dry but insightful.