'Brown Was Bigger Than Test Scores'

By Theodore M. Shaw

This year marks 42 years since the U.S. Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education . For African-Americans, Brown meant more than the mandate to desegregate public schools. It meant the end of the Plessy v. Ferguson era of officially sanctioned American apartheid. Brown split American history into B.C. and A.D., in which the promise of the Constitution's protection and of full participation in the life of our democracy finally applied to all its citizens. The Supreme Court's decision was one of the sparks that lighted the fires of the civil-rights movement. It stands as one of the defining moments in American history.

Ironically, despite Brown 's significance, public schools in 1996 remain deeply segregated. Many of the schools African-American students attend are dilapidated and dangerous places, where quality education is a distant dream. Those who graduate--or drop out--from these schools are ill-prepared to become productive workers in a global economy. For too many, Brown 's promise remains unfulfilled.

Many African-Americans yearn for the pre- Brown days, when, as they now see it, black communities fared better. For them, Brown was based on a false and an insulting premise: that black schools were inherently inferior and that black children could not learn unless they were sitting next to white children, as if the magic dust of white superiority rubbed off in integrated classrooms and sifted onto black children, imbuing them with an ability to...