Before and after School Desegregation: African-American Parents' Involvement in Schools

Abstract

In this article, the author summarizes three generations of desegregation efforts since the Brown decision, with the intent to highlight parent voices. The author puts forth arguments that researchers and policymakers should turn their attention to the importance of broader sociocultural facets of desegregation. The author provides recollections from her mother, elementary school principal, and first-grade teacher showing that African-American parents did not have to be formally invited to participate in their children's education before school desegregation. The author also gives her own recollections of PTA meetings, fundraising activities, social gatherings, and visits to her classroom by her mother. She describes the efforts since desegregation to invite African-American parents to become involved in school affairs. She suggests that educators must examine whether African-American parents feel invited or uninvited.

Parent Involvement, African American Mothers, and the Politics of Educational Care

“…Yet, their activist tradition has been evident since the founding of public schools. It is a tradition rooted in cultural ideals of racial uplift and political resistance to oppression that has allowed African American parents to influence a host of educational reform movements, especially those related to school desegregation, school choice and community control (Allen & Jewell, 1995;Anderson, 1988;Barnes, 1997;Cooper, 2005;Edwards, 1993;Levin, 1972;Noguera, 2004;Schneider, 1988;Shujaa, 1992). Moreover, the efforts of grassroots, African American, parent activists have been central to the improvement of some of the nation's largest school systems.…”

The Healing of Progressivist America: The Premises of School Desegregation within U.S. Civil Religion

“…Thus one of the former pillars of black neighborhoods was virtually eradicated overnight. The result was often a weaker neighborhood social structure (cf Dempsey and Noblit 1993;Edwards 1993). …”

The Consequences of School Desegregation in a Kansas Town 50 Years After Brown

“…These included loss of decision-making authority over their children's education (Morris 2001) loss of teachers and administrators (Cecelski 1994;Karpinski 2006;Tillman 2004), and loss of community when Black schools were closed. Children were bussed out of their neighborhoods (Dempsey and Noblit 1993) to White schools where they and their parents were not welcomed and where teachers were not prepared to teach them (Edwards 1996). In spite of the sacrifices African Americans made to ensure their children received an equitable and high quality education, the achievement gap between racial minority students and their White counterparts provides the most tangible evidence of persistent inequities (Ferguson 2003;Harris et al 2004).…”