Brown v. Board of Education and the Continued Segregation of Urban Schools
Dr. Rashid Faisal @BowtiePrincipal
@BowtiePrincipal
Today marks the 70th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, a landmark ruling by the United States Supreme Court that legally abolished state-sponsored dual educational systems. Supreme Court Justice Warren delivered the court’s unanimous decision on separate schools for Black and White students with the following statement: “We conclude that in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
Unfortunately, the Brown Decision did not translate to immediate improvements for Black students. For example, Detroit, a non-southern state, operated segregated schools since the 1840s; the public schools were thoroughly segregated throughout the antebellum and Civil War periods, Reconstruction, during the era of Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement, and well after the 1954 Brown Decision. By 1960, more than 50% of the country’s Black population lived outside the South, opting to escape de jure segregation, racist violence, and economic exploitation by migrating to cities in the East, Midwest, and West. Black Southern migrants were drawn to these regions to give their children better educational opportunities. They were met with de facto segregation or segregationist practices that governed social relations between whites and blacks, even though not officially recognized by law.
Black migrants encountered de facto segregation in two critical areas: housing and education. Racially restrictive covenants, racist neighborhood associations, and discriminatory real estate practices confined the majority of Black Detroiters to all Black neighborhoods and all Black schools. White Detroiters resisted Blacks moving into white neighborhoods because they knew residential integration would lead to school integration. It became readily apparent to Black migrants that W. E. B. DuBois’ “color line” existed across the United States. For example, in the 1960s, seventy-five of Detroit’s public schools were all White, and eight were all Black. Thirty percent of Detroit’s public schools were 90% white, while the remaining seventy percent were 90% Black. In the schools enrolling white students, none of the teachers were Black.
Although the schools serving Black students had a mixed-race teacher population, all the city’s Black teachers taught in all Black schools. No matter how well-qualified Black teachers were to teach, white schools refused to hire them. The norm of only hiring white teachers was based on the belief that Black teachers were incompetent and incapable of providing white children with quality instruction. It was the opposite for all Black schools, where white teachers who could not find employment in all-white schools could find jobs in schools with an all-Black student population. White teachers resisted the hiring of Black teachers for all-white schools, mixed-race schools, or majority Black schools. Even though teaching was one of the few professions open to Blacks, they suffered discrimination even when seeking to teach in all-Black segregated schools. For example, Most of the teachers of Black students were white. For instance, in 1949, there were 386 Black teachers employed by Detroit’s public school system, accounting for roughly 5% of teachers.
The parents of Black students complained of their children being taught an inferior curriculum with racially biased textbooks by racist teachers who also routinely mistreated their children. In addition, Black parents complained of all Black schools being resource-poor, with school buildings suffering from physical decay and poor maintenance. As the number of Black children increased in Detroit’s public schools, issues such as truancy, delinquency, incorrigibility, discipline and behavioral problems, and cognitive labels, such as ‘retardation,’ ‘special,’ and ‘slow,’ were assigned to Black children. Black children were judged as not possessing the same moral, social, attitudinal, and intellectual capacities as white children. As a result, the academic standards in Black schools declined, spending decreased, attention to building maintenance and the upkeep of the physical plant was neglected, and Black students were least likely to attend schools with academically rigorous programs.
White Detroiters perceived that educating Black children and white children together would impede the progress of white children by slowing down instruction and “forcing” them to interact with Black children who were intellectually inferior, immoral, dirty, lazy, and ill-equipped to meet the demands of rigorous instruction. By the 1950s and throughout the 1960s, even before the 1967 urban rebellion, Whites started leaving Detroit and moving to the suburbs, where Blacks made up roughly 3% of the total metro-Detroit suburban population. By 1970, school segregation in regions outside the South was growing. For example, due to white flight, white students represented roughly 30% of students in Detroit Public Schools, and they were concentrated in segregated white schools.
Segregation in America’s northern cities is under-researched as we tend to think of school segregation during the era of the Brown Decision as something exclusive to the South. As of 2024, Detroit public schools are 82% Black because of “white flight” resulting from white fear of racial integration in housing and schooling. School segregation in Detroit is a centuries-old battle dating back to the 1840s. With each decade, White pushback against integrated housing and neighborhoods caused increased segregation in schools. The message is clear: For more than a century, White Detroiters preferred all-white neighborhoods and schools as a matter of choice. As we reflect on the Brown v. Board of Education decision, we are confronted with the reality that legally ending school segregation did change or alter a ‘segregationist mindset’ that will look for other ways to maintain racially separate communities and schools.
Dr. Rashid Faisal is an Associate Professor and Department Chair at the College of Urban Education at Davenport University. He also holds appointments at the College of Education, Health, and Human Services at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and Teachers College at Columbia University.
Unfortunately, the Brown Decision did not translate to immediate improvements for Black students. For example, Detroit, a non-southern state, operated segregated schools since the 1840s; the public schools were thoroughly segregated throughout the antebellum and Civil War periods, Reconstruction, during the era of Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement, and well after the 1954 Brown Decision. By 1960, more than 50% of the country’s Black population lived outside the South, opting to escape de jure segregation, racist violence, and economic exploitation by migrating to cities in the East, Midwest, and West. Black Southern migrants were drawn to these regions to give their children better educational opportunities. They were met with de facto segregation or segregationist practices that governed social relations between whites and blacks, even though not officially recognized by law.
Black migrants encountered de facto segregation in two critical areas: housing and education. Racially restrictive covenants, racist neighborhood associations, and discriminatory real estate practices confined the majority of Black Detroiters to all Black neighborhoods and all Black schools. White Detroiters resisted Blacks moving into white neighborhoods because they knew residential integration would lead to school integration. It became readily apparent to Black migrants that W. E. B. DuBois’ “color line” existed across the United States. For example, in the 1960s, seventy-five of Detroit’s public schools were all White, and eight were all Black. Thirty percent of Detroit’s public schools were 90% white, while the remaining seventy percent were 90% Black. In the schools enrolling white students, none of the teachers were Black.
Although the schools serving Black students had a mixed-race teacher population, all the city’s Black teachers taught in all Black schools. No matter how well-qualified Black teachers were to teach, white schools refused to hire them. The norm of only hiring white teachers was based on the belief that Black teachers were incompetent and incapable of providing white children with quality instruction. It was the opposite for all Black schools, where white teachers who could not find employment in all-white schools could find jobs in schools with an all-Black student population. White teachers resisted the hiring of Black teachers for all-white schools, mixed-race schools, or majority Black schools. Even though teaching was one of the few professions open to Blacks, they suffered discrimination even when seeking to teach in all-Black segregated schools. For example, Most of the teachers of Black students were white. For instance, in 1949, there were 386 Black teachers employed by Detroit’s public school system, accounting for roughly 5% of teachers.
The parents of Black students complained of their children being taught an inferior curriculum with racially biased textbooks by racist teachers who also routinely mistreated their children. In addition, Black parents complained of all Black schools being resource-poor, with school buildings suffering from physical decay and poor maintenance. As the number of Black children increased in Detroit’s public schools, issues such as truancy, delinquency, incorrigibility, discipline and behavioral problems, and cognitive labels, such as ‘retardation,’ ‘special,’ and ‘slow,’ were assigned to Black children. Black children were judged as not possessing the same moral, social, attitudinal, and intellectual capacities as white children. As a result, the academic standards in Black schools declined, spending decreased, attention to building maintenance and the upkeep of the physical plant was neglected, and Black students were least likely to attend schools with academically rigorous programs.
White Detroiters perceived that educating Black children and white children together would impede the progress of white children by slowing down instruction and “forcing” them to interact with Black children who were intellectually inferior, immoral, dirty, lazy, and ill-equipped to meet the demands of rigorous instruction. By the 1950s and throughout the 1960s, even before the 1967 urban rebellion, Whites started leaving Detroit and moving to the suburbs, where Blacks made up roughly 3% of the total metro-Detroit suburban population. By 1970, school segregation in regions outside the South was growing. For example, due to white flight, white students represented roughly 30% of students in Detroit Public Schools, and they were concentrated in segregated white schools.
Segregation in America’s northern cities is under-researched as we tend to think of school segregation during the era of the Brown Decision as something exclusive to the South. As of 2024, Detroit public schools are 82% Black because of “white flight” resulting from white fear of racial integration in housing and schooling. School segregation in Detroit is a centuries-old battle dating back to the 1840s. With each decade, White pushback against integrated housing and neighborhoods caused increased segregation in schools. The message is clear: For more than a century, White Detroiters preferred all-white neighborhoods and schools as a matter of choice. As we reflect on the Brown v. Board of Education decision, we are confronted with the reality that legally ending school segregation did change or alter a ‘segregationist mindset’ that will look for other ways to maintain racially separate communities and schools.
Dr. Rashid Faisal is an Associate Professor and Department Chair at the College of Urban Education at Davenport University. He also holds appointments at the College of Education, Health, and Human Services at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and Teachers College at Columbia University.