Jim Crow’s Children: The Broken Promise of the Brown Decision by Peter Irons

Peter Irons, professor emeritus of political science at the University of alifornia at San Diego, wrote this book in 2002. Eight years later, its message still speaks to what we offer as education to our children. Irons traces the beginnings of American slaves seeking equality, noting how any education they acquired helped fuel their efforts to be citizens in their own right. We see Thurgood Marshall, the black lawyer fighting for the right for African-Americans to be educated in white schools from 1936 to 1954, when the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka struck down the idea that separate schools could ever be equal, because of the slur and the indignity such schools inflicted on the hearts and minds of African-American children.

But the battle was not over by any means. Irons goes on to show how school district after school district resisted integration, complaining about federal interference and in many cases insisting that their schools were open to all, explaining segregation as a matter of neighborhoods, where people happened to live. Busing was finally introduced in many areas to facilitate integration, and caused a backlash of anger from many white parents and community leaders, leading to violence in some cases. Irons follows this “winding-down” of integration tactics as equality through bussing became less and less popular, with a majority of Supreme Court justices reflecting these sentiments.

Irons concludes that segregation is alive and well in this country, since most African-American students attend schools that have mostly black students, and that most white students attend schools with only a few minority students. The fact that schools serve their neighborhoods is an indication to many that segregation is a fact, one that people have chosen. Irons, however, cites statistics to show the crushing and debilitating impact that substandard schools have on their students, failing to offer an opportunity for these children to achieve something for themselves or for their communities.