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ABSTRACT
The 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision provides a critical opportunity to reflect on Brown's importance, impact, and the lessons it provides on achieving racial desegregation and its relationship to the progressive inclusion of students with disabilities into public schools across the United States. This article explores the parallels and intersections between the racial desegregation of America's public schools and the inclusion of students with disabilities in these schools.
PUBLIC SCHOOLS WERE AT THE CENTER OF THE National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP) strategy to achieve racial equity economically and socially throughout the United States in the 1950s. Despite the heroism of Black soldiers in World War II, the integration of troops, and the opportunities to pursue education through the Veteran's Act, Black Americans in the late 1940s and the 1950s faced Jim Crow laws in much of the South and de facto segregation throughout much of the North. Stymied by attempts at social and economic integration, the NAACP decided to focus on desegregating the schools:
"Segregation," "desegregation," "integration" and "assimilation" are key words that have served as lenses through which racial inequity and oppression through schooling have been viewed and understood. This language is not a compatible fit with the real world of schools, teaching and learning, nor does it reflect an understanding of the full dimensions of the problem. (Hilliard, 2004)
Many Americans view public school education as a great equalizer. Through education, upward mobility and the pursuit of the American dream were felt to be possible for Black Americans. The logic was that by desegregating the schools, the future generations of Americans who would attend integrated schools would achieve equity and erase the color line. The first step was to create proximity between Blacks and Whites and to allow Black children access to the privileged education formerly available only to Whites. Lawyers and activists recruited plaintiffs, cultivated local school support, and laid the groundwork for the long legal challenge to the racial segregation of schools (Sullivan, 2004). By exposing the differential outlay of resources for children of color in terms of teachers, materials, and even facilities, lawyers for the plaintiffs revealed the lack of opportunity available to Black children because of the systematic...