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Against the Backdrop of Brown:
Testimonios of Coalitions to Teach Social Change


Heather A. Oesterreich and Allison P. Conway
New Mexico State Univesity, Las Cruces

"I BELIEVE that we need to rethink how Brown is typically presented in the school curriculum ... [to] clarify the distinction... between simply celebrating Brown and its legacy and teaching about its complexity."1 1
      Three years ago, numerous essays, speeches, commemorations, and research projects marked the 50th Anniversary of the famous story of the U.S. Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), which struck down the "separate but equal" doctrine of racial segregation in schools and moved "with all deliberate speed" to desegregate them.2 Much of what was uncovered, debated, and engaged in the fifty-year aftermath and progress of Brown v. Board of Education had and continues to have deep implications for informing how to teach this and other similar historical cases. After the celebration, analysis, and contemplation of the 50th Anniversary, one thing is clear—the case, taught simply in many of our schools as a civil rights achievement, is not simple at all. And, in order to connect our classroom practices to the realities of the controversies and contradictions of the larger social and political worlds in which we live, we can utilize the rhetoric and research from the Anniversary debates to create spaces for wrestling with complexity of social change. The complex legacy of Brown allows us to highlight testimonios of coalition as a framework for historical analysis to teach that social change does not occur in sudden legislative moments, but in the persistence of arduous battles across time by many people—social change is connected to the past, the present, and the future. 2
   

Testimonios of Coalition

 
      To promote revolutionary changes in historical self-perception and U.S. society itself, several scholars have called attention to the construction of how U.S. history is written and how it is taught in colleges and K-12 settings in the United States. However, the way to accomplish these changes is debatable, particularly when taught history is so frequently framed as iconic events—a solitary person or event is uncritically situated as the cultural icon that changed how life is lived and experienced by all people.3Testimonios of coalition acts as a framework to enable students and teachers alike to work against iconic history by recognizing that history is not based only on what individuals achieve in solitary moments. Rather, these purported solitary events that change how life is lived and experienced were made possible from the actions of individuals, families, and communities across time. 3
      More specifically, testimonios of coalition situates history as a constant battleground for social justice through a framework that contextualizes stories and events as part of a legacy of social and political action utilizing five tenets of analysis:
  1. History is relational across multiple geographies or origins to acknowledge how individual selves and struggles are connected to and reliant on the contributions of others;4
  2. Bridges between different histories and their origins are imperative to fight intersecting systems of power that cause oppression;5
  3. Historical events situated as iconic events act as an initial point of focus which must be expanded in order to weave a complex story of those who have been historically silenced;
  4. History involves intense repression or struggle and historical discourse should disclose political violence inflicted on whole communities emanating from multiple sites of oppression;6 and
  5. History is past, present, and future rather than a linear one-direction trajectory.7
 4
      We utilize Brown v. Board of Education, which is traditionally taught in college and K-12 history courses as the case that both started the discussion about and ended the practice of segregation in schools, to highlight testimonios of coalition as a framework for historical analysis. First, we demonstrate how the fight for equality through desegregation of schools emerged from oppressions of race, class, and language and has continued for over a century through the tremendous work of individuals, families, and communities. Next, we highlight how critical elements of the lived realities of violence in school desegregation have been silenced over time to hide the complexity of racism, classism, and linguicism. Finally, we demonstrate how school desegregation and segregation is not a thing of the past by looking at the historical legacy of segregation that continues in K-12 schools today. Utilizing testimonios of coalition to teach history contextualizes stories and events as part of a legacy of social and political action. This type of narration or historical framework impacts not only those who testify, but also those who are witness to or readers of the testimony.8 As Alvarez (1984) writes of a lesser known case of desegregation with the Lemon Grove Incident in San Diego, California, "these lived experiences are a testimony of the San Diego Mexican community's rights and their actions towards equality in education not only for their own children, but the Mexican population in California and the United States."9Testimonios of coalition offers a way to promote revolutionary changes in historical self-perception and U.S. society itself by demonstrating that social change does not occur in sudden legislative moments, but in the persistence of arduous battles across time by many people—social change is connected to the past, the present, and the future. 5
   

Court Cases

 
      While most students can recognize the Brown court case as the "school desegregation" case, few if any have heard of Benjamin Roberts v. City of Boston; Adolpho "Babe" Romo, Sr. v. Trustees of the Tempe Normal School District; Irene Jones v. School Board of Ketchikan Alaska; Anna Tobeluk v. Lind; or Mendez v. Westminister.10 Nor have they explicitly studied cases outside of the school desegregation movement involving battles against segregation in transportation, such as McCabe v. Atchison; T. & S. F. Ry. Co. (1914); segregation in residential neighborhoods and community covenants, such as Buchanan v. Warley (1917) or Corrigan v. Buckley (1926); and segregation regarding voting requirements, as in the case of Guinn and Beal v. The United States (1915).11 These court cases and the people who experienced the joys and struggles attached to the lived realities of them are probably not "common knowledge," but they set the stage for Brown.12Brown had tremendous impact on educational institutes and the larger society; however, when presented as the one case which irrefutably and unquestionably ended school segregation, the complexity of the topic of segregation gets lost. Such a focus silences the bleaker aspects of history which situate segregation as a constant and continual fight against racism, linguicism, and classism in educational institutes and the larger society. A larger historical purview, looking backward and forward over a span of at least 125 years from the historical Brown decision in 1954, demonstrates testimonios of coalition to highlight moments of intense local community-based struggles of parents, students, and lawyers who fought against racism, linguicism, and classism by working across time, geographies, and oppressions for desegregation. Part of the testimonios of coalition of the past 100 years of desegregation court history in the United States demonstrates intentionality across racial and linguistic borders to set the stage for Brown.13 The only way that certain people could battle for quality education was to understand that they must connect across racial and linguistic positionalities to demand sufficient environments for their right to achieve academic, economic, and social status. Testimonios of coalition focus on known, intentional spaces and unknown, unintentional spaces where groups of people struggle to realize their hopes and dreams, notwithstanding overwhelming obstacles. For example, accepted public discourse around Brown situates segregation and desegregation with a strong focus on Black and White; however, segregation affected all people, including Native Americans, Asian immigrants, and Latino14 immigrants.15 We highlight multiple cases to demonstrate how teaching desegregation in the framework of testimonios of coalition restructures history beyond the incomplete Black-White framework of racial/segregation discourse and sheds light on other facets of segregation including not only race, but also class and language. 6
      Local courts across the nation were hearing trials regarding segregated school conditions prior to the shunting of Brown into the dominant social consciousness. These court cases discussed below, while not at all exhaustive of desegregation and segregation decisions, demonstrate how testimonios of coalition in the fight for equity and access in schools and society had started at least 100 years prior to the1954 landmark decision and have continued through the 50 plus years afterward. 7
   

Early Court Cases

 
      Dating back to 1849, the case of Roberts v. City of Boston chronicles a well-organized and purposeful case in which a parent, Benjamin Roberts, sued the city on behalf of his five-year-old daughter who was denied admission to the five White-only schools she walked by everyday on her way to the 'colored' [sic] school.16 Not unlike Brown, the case was a planned act intended to bring the segregation of society as a whole to the forefront of prevalent sociological issues. Unlike Brown, however, despite arguments made by the highly-regarded legal team of abolitionist sentiment, the judge ruled against Roberts.17 In pre-Civil War America, such a case marked the beginning of testimonios of coalition of a deeply-rooted group of social activists naming racist practice in public education long before Brown and the usually cited accounts of struggle and triumph for equity in the Civil Rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s. 8
      Another early case in 1925 concerned how schools in the Southwest were being segregated based on language and race. Adolpho Romo, a citizen of "Spanish-Mexican" descent living in Arizona, brought forth an argument against the Trustees of the Tempe Normal School District who had established a separate school in the district specifically for children of "Mexican-American" or "Spanish-American" heritage to be taught entirely by student-teachers.18 The school board in this case alleged that the children were segregated for their own good as the student-teachers employed at the school were able to speak Spanish and accommodate the specific attending students. The court determined that the school could segregate the children to accommodate them better, but in doing so had to, under previously argued cases, create an equal environment—therefore ordering that the teachers employed at the school for the Mexican- and Spanish-American children be just as qualified as the other graduated teachers in the district.19 9
      In the far northwestern region, Alaska has chronicles of cases which intersected race and class as means of segregation in its history of public education in the state. In 1905, Congress set up a territorial school system in Alaska in order to provide education for "white children and children of mixed blood who live a civilized life," thus creating a system in which a "civilized" lifestyle, not necessarily race, determined the student's right to free, public education.20 The codeword "civilized" hid the racism and classism intended in determining schooling outcomes for students who did not meet criteria of specific religious, socio-economic, and racial backgrounds. In the Alaskan towns, mixed-race children deemed as leading a "civilized" lives were able to attend the same schools as the White children, while the U.S. Government Bureau of Indian Affairs directly organized the education the "uncivilized" Eskimo [sic] or non-mixed/non-white children. Children were not segregated due to race, but rather to "choice" of lifestyle according to policies and practices. In 1928, however, the School Board of Ketchikan amended the system to no longer accept Native American or "mixed-blood" students at all, thus creating completely segregated schools and naming race as the particular segregator.21 10
      In 1929, the parents of Irene Jones, a young student of "mixed-race" in the Ketchikan school district, sued the school under the Fourteenth Amendment after being told Jones could not attend the local school in her community, but had to go to the "Indian" school. The parents won the case against the School Board, whose members were reminded that they could not override laws of the state or Congress.22 Communities and parents have struggled in coalition under the literal naming and renaming of injustices of segregation in Alaska as cases shifted names, participants, and locales with Hootch v. Alaska State-Operated School System in 1972 which became Tobeluk v. Lind in 1976 and changed again to Tobeluk v. Reynolds.23 The testimonios of coalition in this case continue to present-day Alaska, where families in rural communities challenge the legacy of discriminatory education as they fight against high drop-out rates amongst Native American students; the lack of local, community high schools in the isolated small towns; the resulting boarding schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and state government; and the limited academic programs available in public schools.24 11
      In Alaska, school placement was determined implicitly by lifestyle (civilized or uncivilized) and then explicitly by race and ethnicity. Such practices certainly were not limited to the region. Discrimination was applied in a variety of fashions, such as in some California districts, where issues of race and ethnicity were hidden by policy on student surnames. Surnames were assessed and used, sometimes exclusively, in determining a child's race and ethnicity and, therefore, the child's eligibility in attending the school. This name game practice came under public scrutiny because of several California families in the mid-1940s. In 1944, the Mendez family moved from a predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood to the predominantly White community of Westminster. When the family's two children arrived at school, they were denied admittance because the district "didn't allow children who appeared to be Mexican [to] integrate with Anglo students" and would therefore have to attend the "Mexican" school.25 The Mendez family was shocked as their cousins, also of Mexican descent, attended the school. Their cousins, however, did not share the same surname and were not assumed Mexican. Simply based on their "passing" surname, the cousins were therefore allowed to "integrate" with the White students in the school.26 This action of the school district and similar actions of surrounding districts brought five families to bring forth a suit on behalf of their 15 children and some 5,000 students of Mexican heritage.27 The case, Mendez v. Westminster, marks the first case filed in federal court that reasoned that separate was not equal in public education specifically and such a separation actually violated the Fourteenth Amendment.28 12
   

After Brown

 
      These early cases are often dismissed in favor of an iconic teaching of Brown as the seminal desegregation case in an American society of the 1950s ready for change. Without deliberate intention, many students learn that after the Supreme Court came to their unanimous decision in Brown, school segregation became morally and socially reprehensible and therefore the landscape of school and communities changed to adhere to that decision. A testimonios of coalition framework that situates history as past, present, and future rather than a linear one-direction trajectory demonstrates that Brown was important because the Warren Court changed the question around desegregation. Instead of asking whether the schools were equal—a matter that could be corrected superficially with additional tax dollars, but which would require constant checking afterward to ensure that the changes were permanent—the court asked whether segregation hurt the students even if the schools were considered equal. However, simply changing the question did not change the landscape of school and communities immediately after the decision was rendered. Brown II came just one year later in 1955 as almost an exasperated plea from the Court to not only desegregate, as they had ruled previously in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, but to do so with all deliberate speed.29Brown is less an example of resounding social change than it is an example of how restructuring of social and political frameworks is a long and arduous struggle against intersecting systems of power and privilege that cause oppression. In the same ways that there had been cases previous to Brown impacting desegregation, Brown II would mark just the beginning of a new chapter in the continued historical legacy fought in the courts to address issues of inequity in public schools enforced through segregation 13
      From the decisions of Brown and Brown II, desegregation rhetoric was on the national forefront of social causes. The decision did not end the issue, but rather brought forth a resistance fueled by racism, linguicism, and classism which demonstrated just how much the disagreements over segregation and society could not be easily or swiftly solved. The slow movement toward school desegregation is demonstrated by the testimonios of coalition in a multitude of court cases and events that have occurred after the Brown decisions—Cooper v. Aaron in 1958, Griffen v. County School Board of Price Edward County in 1964, Rogers v. Paul in 1965, the Chicago Public Schools boycott in 1965, Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, Virginia in 1968, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenberg Board of Education in 1971, Keyes v. School District No. 1, Denver, Colorado in 1973, Milliken v. Bradley (I) and (II) in 1974 and 1977, and Missouri v. Jenkins (I), (II), and (III) in 1989, 1990, and 1995.30 The outcome of Brown has not, as often assumed and taught, resulted in a society awakened to the racism, linguicism, and classism surrounding segregation. The climate for change has not been encompassing and, as cases since the Brown decision reaching to present day show, the issue of segregation is still enmeshed in larger social and political contexts. 14
   

Testimonios of Coalition to Uncover Racism

 
      The focus of teaching and celebrating Brown as an iconic incident—a single moment in history, brought on by a single minority group, for the single cause and attainment of school desegregation—not only ignores the amalgamation of cases that create testimonios of coalition, but also the overt racism, linguicism, and classism that gets hidden in the sterility of terms like segregation and desegregation. Testimonios of coalition as a framework for teaching history calls teachers and students to recognize that the past, present, and future are mired in intense repression or struggle created by political violence inflicted on whole communities emanating from multiple sites of oppression. This is not easy and requires difficult discussions. As historian John Hope Franklin states,

The most difficult discussion in America in the 21st century is still about race ... To want to remember or to recognize the experiences of the past as being relevant ... [Americans] simply don't want anything that is painful. They want to live in a painless society—where everything is pleasant and everything is joyful, and the unfortunate thing about insisting on that, they're also insisting on a world of unreality, a world that doesn't exist that didn't exist.31
In testimonios of coalition, educators and students focus on the reality that exists in a history that is situated in greater political, social, and economic contexts which brings issues of, racism, classism, and linguicism to the forefront through a complex story of the lived realities of those who have been historically silenced.		 15
   

In the Everydayness of Desegregation

 
      Silenced in the focus of desegregation as an iconic court case theme are the memories of violent racism demonstrated by White school officials, students, families, and governmental leaders in which marginalized families continued to fight for educational equity for their children. 16
      In the Southwest, racism was at the heart of the segregation of Mexican-American children. Superintendents in California proudly reiterated tired stereotypes of the nineteenth century and the rhetoric of twentieth-century Americanization. A Garden Grove superintendent (who was among one of the five school districts charged in the Mendez v. Westminster case) boldly asserted, "Mexicans are inferior in personal hygiene, ability, and in their economic outlook."32 Placement of students in schools was based primarily on "Mexican" surnames, though additional qualifications or disqualifications were considered. If a child was considered dark-skinned but did not have a "Mexican" surname, "the school authorities inspect[ed] the children so that the offspring of a Mexican mother whose name may be O'Shaughnessy [would] not slip into the wrong school."33 And even in their segregated schools, Mexican-American students faced the racial bigotry of low-expectations and limited opportunities because many of their teachers and administrators assumed they would only excel or desire to work on farms. Louis Flores, a student who attended a "Mexican" school recalls his principal telling him, "If you have to go and pick cotton, you get out and pick cotton. It doesn't matter if you quit school."34 17
      After Brown, at the news that Black students would attend "their" schools, White governments, school boards, and families created layers of resistance in policy and everyday actions. When 400 Black students signed up in 1956 in Little Rock, Arkansas to be part of integration into White schools, the school board required them to interview and pass screening to be deemed appropriate candidates for integration. When the interviews and screenings were complete, Black students were still denied admission to the still all-White school.35 Rarely do students learn that in the same city one year later, Arkansas governor Orval Faubus called out to the state's national guard to surround Little Rock Central High School to prevent any Black students from entering. When Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine Black students to integrate schools, arrived to attend school in a freshly-pressed white dress, she was denied access to the school by the National Guard and subjected to swarms of people armed with picketing signs and racial slurs shouting, spitting, and snarling sentiments such as "Go back to Africa!"36 In 1957, 15-year-old Dorothy Geraldine Counts and three other students became the first Black students to attend the previously all-White Harding High School in Charlotte, North Carolina. They were greeted by angry mobs who screamed obscenities and racial slurs at them. Counts' picture appeared in many newspapers as did others of Black students attempting to attend White schools for the first time. Counts' family feared for her safety and withdrew her from Harding to send her out of state to complete high school.37 From 1954 until 1960, several Black students were part of these testimonios of coalition when they had to be escorted daily into these all-White schools.38 18
      Teaching Brown as testimonios of coalition requires naming the contexts of racism, linguicism, and classism that existed pre- and post-Brown, including the painful aspects of segregation and desegregation that epitomize the violence and hatred surrounding these issues that are not about joy, nor ease, nor comfort. As Ladson-Billings writes "Brown is more accurately characterized as part of the steps in a long arduous process to rid the nation of its most pernicious demons—racism..."39 And within the testimonios of coalition framework that situates history not as an arrived at trajectory of an iconic incident, but connected to the present and the future, steps are still being taken today to battle the "pernicious demon" that continues to exist in the United States—a demon that all students must continue to live with and know they are responsible for battling. 19
      While White students are rarely situated in the context of the debate and battle for desegregated schools, they are a part of the violence that has existed across communities. Many have benefited from the structural exclusion of segregation that kept them in financially secure schools with solid resources and strong teachers. Additionally, they were and still are affected because they learned about racial tension, but did not have to negotiate White Americans' historical responsibility in segregation or know about their contemporary roles in perpetuating it.40 If Brown is simply taught as an iconic incident that ended segregation, then students no longer have to see themselves as accountable for struggling to end racism. 20
      Schools with predominantly White students and White teachers illustrate how the iconic teaching of Brown allows individuals to ignore present day segregation and its impact on education. As Hess explains, one teacher expressed that:

[His] students could simultaneously believe that Brown was a grand achievement because it mandated integration (thus, ridding the nation of a constitutional and moral blight) and that the school they attended was fulfilling the mandates of Brown because it was not segregated by law ... the idea that Brown forced the desegregation of schools was such a powerful myth that it shrouded the reality of segregation ... These white students did not have to confront continuing (and in many places, worsening) inequalities in educational opportunities that are based on race.41
The students in the classroom that Hess describes are not required to wrestle with the complexity inherent in larger social and political issues surrounding the precursor and aftermath of Brown—specifically the forces such as racism, classism, and linguicism that continually work both for and against segregation. Virtually all teachers and 90% of students believe that it is important for students of different races to interact; however, most believe that this is not currently happening in their schools42 And, they are right.		 21
   

Connecting Desegregation and Segregation To Current Day

 
      Testimonios of coalition as a teaching framework requires students and teachers to look at current landscapes of their lives in the context of past events to demonstrate that individuals are not only impacted by the past of history but are part of the present and future of it. Teaching Brown as an iconic incident that ended segregation does not connect to the statistical realities of schools today. Even as the proportion of Whites among school-aged children and youth has declined to less than 60% of total school populations, they are more likely to attend all-White schools.43 Latino students in the United States are the most segregated students of color in public schools.44 Black students are not faring strongly in their right to attend integrated schools. In 1980, 63% of Black students attended predominantly minority schools. By 1998, the number increased to 70%. All minority groups—including Native American, Asian American, Latino, and Black students—feel the negative effects of racial segregation including fewer educational resources45 and less qualified teachers.46 22
   

Intersecting Systems of Oppression

 
      Focusing only on racial statistics silences the subtle complexity of how the interactions of class, language, and race continue segregated realities for students in our schools. Denver Public Schools (DPS) provides an example of how these complexities are enacted to maintain segregation in the face of legislated desegregation. DPS was ordered to desegregate in 1973 by the U.S. Supreme Court under Keyes v. Denver School District No. 1.47 This was the first case which specifically named and "recognized the rights of Latinos" in issues of desegregation and education. The case and its aftermath, however, were enmeshed in issues of class, language, and race which neither the Supreme Court ruling nor the actions taken by the district took into account. For example, the economic realities of Denver during this time created the opportunity for White, middle-class, predominately English-speaking families to move outside of the metro school district that was ordered to desegregate. This created a situation in which the city of Denver was essentially "sealed off" from its neighboring suburbs and "severely curtailed its ability to have any lasting and stable desegregation of its public school students."48 The momentum of the Supreme Court decision was changed by the way in which the district lines were drawn, who was forced to desegregate, and the political power of the mostly White suburbs not having to desegregate. After overthrowing the Keyes decision in 1995, the Denver metro is today an area where racial minorities, specifically Blacks and Latinos, are isolated in their school district not only in comparison to the White students in the suburbs, but in comparison to the population of White students within their own district. In the Denver metro area, a total of one-fifth of the total school population is White and 7% of these students attend schools in which the majority of students (80%) are White.49 Additionally, Latino English Language Learners (ELLs) are more isolated with other Latino students in DPS in comparison to schools across the nation.50 23
      Similar to the Keyes case from Denver in 1970s, Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) and the city were experiencing the same White flight and segregation situated in race and class which legislation to desegregate seemed to be doing little to resolve. This eroded legal desegregation in the city in the mid-1980s, and by 1990, inner-city whites comprised less than 5% of the total population. Meanwhile, the population of Black residents in the city grew from 8.4% in 1960 to 30.4% in 1990.51 Economically, the Black workforce saw their jobs and opportunities to make a decent wage decline as the industry moved out of the city.52 The segregated schools of Milwaukee's inner cities, largely Black in population, were failing miserably to educate students in which 31% of Black second graders, for example, read at or above the national level in comparison to 62% of Milwaukee's White students.53 24
      Segregation and desegregation at their best leave much to question in regards to where the United States exists on the pendulums of racism, classism, and linguicism. The United States is not yet a society integrated in its educational institutions despite the years and legacies of families, communities, and educators fighting to make it so. Teaching Brown as an iconic incident that solitarily produced desegregation ignores the institutional racism, classism, and linguicism that promoted segregation then and now. The lauded landmark case of Brown and its legendary status as the desegregation case is but one aspect in a larger contextual framework—a framework that cannot ignore the complexities of communities struggling with the existence of segregation in schools prior to Brown and the persistence of segregation in schools post Brown. 25
   

Conclusion

 
      Teaching through the framework of testimonios of coalition creates a way of understanding history so that "the future is seen not as inexorable but as something that is constructed by people engaged together in life, in history. It's the knowledge that sees history as possibility and not as already determined. The world is not finished. It is always in the process of becoming."54 This is an important way to shape history because educators "who place greater emphasis on the roles of groups or social movements in promoting historical change and place group or movement activities in the broader context of political or social forces provide a more powerful explanatory framework for how and why particular individuals, groups, or movements at particular times were or were not successful."55 And when we do this in history classes, then students are called to think, act, and "recognize that [they] could go and do likewise,"56 each becoming part of testimonios of coalition for the possibility of present and future revolutionary change in the United States. 26


Notes

1.  Diane E. Hess, "Deconstructing the Brown Myth," Rethinking Schools 18, no. 3 (2004): 3.

2.  Glenn Cook, "The Original 'Brown' Town After 50 Years: Desegregated NOT Integrated," Education Digest [Electronic Version] 69, no. 9 (2004): 7–15; Geneva Gay, "Beyond Brown: Promoting Equality Through Multicultural Education," Journal of Curriculum and Supervision 19, no. 3 (2004): 193–216; Hess, "Deconstructing the Brown Myth;" Richard D. Kahlenberg, "Beyond Brown: The New Wave of Desegregation Litigation," Educational Leadership 59, no. 4 (2001/2002): 13–19; Reverend Otis Moss, Jr., "Brown vs. Board of Education: Celebrating a Half-Century of Hope," USA Today 133 (November 2004). Retrieved from WilsonSelectPlus; Amy Stewart Wells, et al., "Tackling Racial Segregation One Policy at a Time: Why School Desegregation Only Went So Far," Teachers College Record 107, no. 9 (2005): 2141–2177.

3.  James Banks, "Transformative Knowledge, Curriculum Reform, and Action," in Multicultural Education: Transformative Knowledge and Action (New York: Teachers College Press, 1996); James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your Highschool History Textbook Got Wrong (New York: Touchstone, 1995); Howard Zinn, People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (P.S.) (New York: Harper, 2005).

4.  John Beverley, "The Margin at the Center: On Testimonio," in De/Colonizing the Subject, eds. Sidonie Smith and Julie Watson (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1992); Zinn, People's History of the United States.

5.  The Latina Feminist Group, Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonios (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001); Bernice Johnson Reagon, "Coalition Politics: Turning the Century," in Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, ed. Barbara Smith (Latham, NY: Kitchen Table Press, 1983).

6.  Ibid.

7.  Ibid.

8.  Karin Barber and P. F. de Moraes Farias, Discourse and Its Disguises: The Interpretation of African Oral Texts (Birmingham, AL: University of Birmingham, 1989), 3.

9.  Robert R. Alvarez, Jr., "The Lemon Grove Incident: The Nation's First Successful Desegregation Court Case," The Journal of San Diego History 32, no. 2 (1986): 1.

10.  John W. Johnson, Historic U.S. Cases, 1690–1993: An Encyclopedia of New York (New York: Garland Publishing, 1992), <http://aaregistry.com/african_american_history/1462/Roberts_vs_City_of_Boston_begins>; "Document A: 'Findings of Fact and Order,'" Adolpho Romo v. William E. Laird, et al., No. 21617, Maricopa County Superior Court 1925, reprinted in the OAH Magazine of History 15 (2001), <http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/deseg/documenta.html>; Alvarez, Jr., 1; "Chicano/a Desegregation Cases," University of Dayton School of Law, <http://academic.udayton.edu/race/04/needs/affirm16.htm>; Carlos Muñoz, Jr., "50 Years After Brown: Latinos Paved Way for Historic School Desegregation Case," In Motion Magazine, <http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/er/cm_brown.html>; Judith Kleinfeld, G. Williamson McDiarmid, and David Hagstrom, "Small Local High Schools Decrease Alaska Native Drop-Out Rates," Journal of American Indian Education 28, no. 3 (1989): 24–30; Margaret E. Montaya, "School Desegregation and Civil Rights Stories: Ketchikan, Alaska," The National Archives, <http://www.archives.gov/midatlantic/education/desegregation/ketchikan.html>.

11. McCabe v. Atchison, T. & S. F. Ry. Co., 235 U.S. 151 (1914), <http://supreme.justia.com/us/235/151/>; "Jim Crow Supreme Court Cases: Segregation," The History of Jim Crow, <http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/scripts/jimcrow/courtcases.cgi?casetype=Segregation>.

12.  Loewen, 96.

13.  Reagon, "Coalition Politics;" Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).

14.  The authors recognize the deeply embedded and differing historical, political, and social context carried within terms such as Hispanic, African American, Native American, and Asian American to denote individuals regardless of their ancestral and geographical heritage. For consistency throughout this paper and to accommodate as closely as possible to the original language of the various resources for this paper, we will use more specific terminology when applicable.

15.  Linda Pertusati, "Beyond Segregation or Integration: A Case Study from Effective Native American Education," Journal of American Indian Education 27, no. 2 (1988): 10–20; Guey Heung Lee v. Johnson, 404 U.S. 1215 (1971).

16.  Johnson, Historic U.S. Cases 1690–1993.

17.  Ibid.

18.  "Document A: 'Findings of Fact and Order.'".

19.  Ibid.

20.  "School Desegregation and Civil Rights Stories: Ketchikan, Alaska," The National Archives.

21.  Ibid.

22.  Ibid.

23.  Kleinfeld, McDiarmid, and Hagstrom, 24–30.

24.  Ibid.

25.  Lisa Jennings, "The End of the 'Mexican School,'" Hispanic Business 26, no. 5, May 2004, 26–28.

26.  Richard R. Valencia, "The Mexican American Struggle for Equal Educational Opportunity in Mendez v. Westminster: Helping to Pave the Way for Brown v. Board of Education," Teachers College Record 107, no. 3 (March 2005): 389–423.

27.  Ibid.

28.  Ibid.

29.  Donald E. Lively, Landmark Supreme Court Cases: A Reference Guide (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999).

30.  Lively, Landmark Supreme Court Cases; see also individual court cases.

31.  John Hope Franklin and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, "The Goree Transcript," A Journey Towards Peace (2000), <http://www.pbs.org/journeytopeace/meettutu/past.html>.

32.  Vicki L. Ruiz, "We Always Tell Our Children They Are Americans," The Brown Quarterly 6, no. 3 (2004): 3. See also, Valencia, 389–423.

33.  Vicki L. Ruiz, "South by Southwest: Mexican Americans and Segregated Schooling," OAH Magazine of History 15 (2001), <http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/deseg/documenta.html>.

34.  Ibid.

35.  Craig Rains, Little Rock Central High 40th Anniversary Commission (Little Rock, AR: Aristotle, 2000), <http://www.centralhigh57.org>.

36.  Melba Patillo Beals, Warriors Don't Cry: Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock (New York: Washington Square Press, 1994).

37.  Advance in North Carolina (September 16, 1957); [School dilemma—Youths in Charlotte, N.C. taunt Dorothy Geraldine Counts, 15, as she walks to enroll at the previously all-white Harding High School (September 4th, 1957).

38.  Juan Williams and Julian Bond, Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965 (New York: Penguin Books, 1988).

39.  Gloria Ladson-Billings, "Landing on the Wrong Note: The Price We Paid for Brown," Educational Researcher 33, no. 7 (2004): 3–13.

40.  "A Vital Progessivism: Segregation and Lynchings [Transcript]," A Biography of America, <http://www.learner.org/biographyofamerica/prog19/transcript/page04.html>.

41.  Hess, "Deconstructing the Brown Myth."

42. Quality Counts 2004: Count Me In (Bethesda, MD: Education Week, 2004).

43.  Gary Orfield and Chugmei Lee, Racial Transformation and the Changing Nature of Segregation (Cambridge, MA: The Civil Rights Project, 2006).

44.  Richard Valencia, Martha Menchaca, and Ruben Donato, "Segregation, Desegregation, and Integration of Chicano Students: Old and New Realities," in Chicano School Failure and Success: Past, Present, and Future (London, United Kingdom: RoutledgeFalmer, 2002).

45.  Ellen Goldring, et al, "Schooling Closer to Home: Desegregation Policy and Neighborhood Contexts," American Journal of Education 11 (2006): 335–362.

46.  Susanna Loeb and Michelle Reninger, Public Policy and Teacher Labor Markets: What We Know and Why It Matters (East Lansing, MI: The Education Policy Center, 2004).

47.  Chungmei Lee, Denver Public Schools: Resegregation Latino Style (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Civil Rights Project, 2006).

48.  Ibid.

49.  Ibid.

50.  Ibid.

51.  Christopher M. Span, "Black Milwaukee's Challenge to the Cycle of Urban Miseducation: Milwaukee's African Immersion Schools," Urban Education 37, no. 5 (2002): 617. See also, D. Crystal Byndloss, "Revisiting Paradigms in Black Education: Community Control and African-Centered Schools," Education and Urban Society 34, no. 1 (2001): 84–100.

52.  Span, 617.

53.  Ibid., 621.

54.  Paulo Friere, Pedagogy of Freedom (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1998), 72.

55.  Terrie Epstein and Jessica Shiller, "Perspective Matters: Social Identity and the Teaching and Learning of National History," Social Education 69, no. 4 (2005): 203.

56.  Charles V. Willie, "The Ethical Foundations of Dr. King's Political Action," Harvard University Gazette, 17 January 2002, <http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/01.17/99-mlkspeech.html>.

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