Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail is well known for its reflections on justice. Quotes such as “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” and “Justice too long delayed is justice denied”, are well known and celebrated, but there’s another section of the letter focused on King’s disappointment with the White moderate. He says,

“I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the White moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the White moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”

Formerly the director of litigation for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, and currently a law professor at Rutgers Law School, where she runs The Inclusion Project, Elise Boddie combines the expertise of a lawyer with the heart of a community organizer to advance educational justice. Focusing on the original promise of integration, the version hoped for by the Brown family in 1954, laid out in the Green Factors from Green v. School Board of New Kent County in 1968, and updated recently by IntegrateNYC and the 5Rs of Real Integration, her vision of integration aspires to create spaces where children can all live into their full humanity, not ignoring race, not defined by race, but in full view of race.

LINKS:

• Five Myths About School Segregation – Elise Boddie in The Washington Post
• Linda Brown and the Unfinished Work of School Integration – Elise Boddie in The New York Times
• Ordinariness as Equality – Elise Boddie on the harm of “Colorblindness”
• The Inclusion Project
• Green v. School Board of New Kent County
• NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund
• Elizabeth Anderson, U of Michigan
• The Imperative of Integration – Elizabeth Anderson
• Cutting School – Dr. Noliwe Rooks
• Mother’s of Massive Resistance – Dr. Elizabeth McRea
• Birthright Citizens – Dr. Martha Jones

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The Integrated Schools Podcast was created by Courtney Mykytyn and Andrew Lefkowits.

This episode was produced, edited, and mixed by Andrew Lefkowits.

Music by Kevin Casey.

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