The 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas declared that separate is inherently unequal. The Supreme Court declared that it was in the national interest for kids to learn together. And while progress towards that goal was slow, and often met with resistance, there was an opportunity in the decision to try to heal our nation from the extraordinary wounds caused by slavery, Jim Crow, and persistent separate and unequal opportunities for Black people. In many ways, 1974's Milliken v Bradley decision put an end to that potential. A tragic Supreme Court decision, that led Thurgood Marshall to write a powerful dissent, in which he says, "unless our children learn together, there is little hope that our nation will learn to live together and understand each other."
Professor Michelle Adams has been studying the Milliken decision for many years, and just released a book about the case, called The Containment: Detroit, The Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North. It's an easily digestible, incredibly compelling story about the power of ordinary people in Detroit who came together to fight for equal opportunity for all kids, and who came up against a court that codified White flight as tool to avoid integration into law. We are still dealing with the ripples of that decision today.
Professor Adams joins us to discuss her life, the book, and why she cares so deeply about this decision. While the decision caused great harm, Professor Adams also provides us with hope. The book gives a more complete understanding of the history of the civil rights movement so we can start from a shared set of facts. This understanding can help us all demand that our children learn together, in high quality, fully funded, integrated public schools, because, as Professor Adams says, it's very hard to have a multiracial democracy without that.
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Finding a school where your children can thrive, while avoiding contributing to the ongoing segregation we see today, can feel like a tough issue for socially conscious parents.
Check out our FREE guide on how you can start engaging with the education system to achieve just that: Click here to download the guide now!
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LINKS:
- The Containment: Detroit, The Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North
- A review of The Containment by Jeffry Toobin at the New York Times (gift link)
- Complete audio from the Milliken v Bradley opinion, including the entirety of Justice Marshall’s dissent.
- Professor Adams first appearance on our show - S5E16 – Revisiting Not In My Suburbs: Milliken v Bradley @46
- Justice Marshall's dissenting opinion in Milliken
- Part 1 of our 3 part series on Keyes v Denver Public Schools
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