One hundred and twenty five years ago this week, The Supreme Court announced its decision in the case of Plessy v Ferguson. The case infamously declared that separate but equal was constitutional. The setting for the case was a train car, but the ramifications on society were profound. And while the Brown v Board decision 63 years later did away with some of those ramifications, in many ways, Plessy remains with us today.

Coming in the wake of the civil war, the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments make up what are known as the Reconstruction Amendments, the Amendments intended to guarantee the freedom of formerly enslaved people. In many ways, the promise of these Amendments remains unfulfilled. In their immediate aftermath, many state legislatures took steps to undermine them, often upheld by federal courts. The Plessy case came in response to just such a law.

In 1890 Louisiana State Legislature passed the Separate Car Act requiring equal, but separate train cars for White and Black passengers. Two years later, Homer Plessy agreed to participate in a challenge to the law, by boarding a train and refusing to ride in the Black car. He was arrested and challenged his case all the way to The Supreme Court.

This decision, regularly making top 10 lists of worst Supreme Court decisions of all time, enshrined segregation in law, allowing for Jim Crow, Black codes, and undoing much of the gains made for Black people during the short-lived years of Reconstruction.

However, the decision wasn’t unanimous, there was one lone dissenting opinion by Justice John Marshall Harlan. Justice Harlan earned the nickname, The Great Dissenter, for a number of dissenting opinions in favor of civil rights during his tenure on the Court at the end of the 19th century. And his dissent in the Plessy case served as a statement of what our values as a country could and should be. It was also a prescient warning of where the social caste system, enshrined by the majority opinion, would lead us.

Paula Forbes has been at the intersection of law and education for many years. As the first in-house counsel for the Minneapolis Public School district, she saw the ways that the caste system enshrined by the Plessy decision, and never fully repaired, continues to act as a barrier to educational justice.

She joins us to discuss the importance of reckoning with and repairing our past in order to create the future we desire.

LINKS:

• Paula Forbes website
• The Chaordic Path
• Plessy v Ferguson
• NYTimes Guest Essay on Justice Harlan by Peter Canellos
• Pre-order Mr. Canellos’s forthcoming book The Great Dissenter
• The Reconstruction Amendments
• Justice John Marshall Harlan
• Malvina Harlan (Justice Harlan’s Wife)
• A story about Justice Harlan and his half-brother

Register for the Integrated Schools Book Club in July. We’ll be reading Heather McGhee’s The Sum of Us

Use these links or start at our Bookshop.org storefront to support local bookstores, and send a portion of the proceeds back to us.

Join our Patreon to support this work, and connect with us and other listeners to discuss these issues even further.

Let us know what you think of this episode, suggest future topics, or share your story with us – @integratedschls on twitter, IntegratedSchools on Facebook, or email us [email protected].

We are a proud member of The Connectd Podcast Network.

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

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

Music by Kevin Casey.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

In the fifth episode in our Brown v. Board at 67: The Stories We Tell Ourselves series, we step away from scholarship to take a moment to listen. I Hope They Hear it in Our Voices is a conversation with two Black parents who live in different parts of the U.S. and who have had very different — yet very similar — school experiences. Greg and Carol tell us a lot about how far we have come since Brown v. Board, about how much work we still have to do, and the very real costs of “access to resources”. With deep gratitude for their willingness to share their stories, we listen.

Email your appreciation to Greg and Carol at [email protected], suggest future topics, or share your story with us – @integratedschls on twitter, or IntegratedSchools on Facebook.

Join our Patreon to support this work, and connect with us and other listeners to discuss these issues even further.

Let us know what you think of this episode, suggest future topics, or share your story with us – @integratedschls on twitter, IntegratedSchools on Facebook, or email us [email protected].

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

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

Music by Kevin Casey.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

For the fourth episode in our Brown v. Board at 67: The Stories We Tell Ourselves series, we talk with Civil Rights attorney David Hinojosa. School segregation is too often painted as binary issue between Black and White people; learning other histories shows that this is far from true. Complicating the picture of what preceded and came as a result of Brown v. Board, Mr. Hinojosa shares a history lesson on the segregation of Latinx communities across the US since the late 1800s. We discuss the politics of race and language, the importance of shared experiences and the deep fights for educational justice that continue to this day.

LINKS:

–San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez

–Richard Valencia

–The Lemon Grove Incident

–Mendez v. Westminster

–Hernandez v. Texas

–Santamaria v. Dallas ISD

–Patricia Gandara on the triple segregation of Latinx people

Join our Patreon to support this work, and connect with us and other listeners to discuss these issues even further.

Let us know what you think of this episode, suggest future topics, or share your story with us – @integratedschls on twitter, IntegratedSchools on Facebook, or email us [email protected].

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

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

Music by Kevin Casey.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Dr. Amanda Lewis (Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools, co-authored with John Diamond) joins us for this third episode of our Brown v. Board at 67: The Stories We Tell Ourselves series. Dr. Lewis’s research takes her to a school that is desegregated on paper but segregated within the building. It is a school, like many, with “race neutral” policies that hide the very real racialized practices in the building. Add to that a dose of opportunity hoarding, and equitable policies become very difficult to institute. Brown v. Board focused on desegregating schools rather than integrating classrooms, but the story we tell about it is that it ended our racist school policies. While that may feel good, our “good intentions” do not absolve us from the impact of our actions.

LINKS:

• Amanda Lewis Race In The Schoolyard 
• Karolyn Tyson Integration Interrupted
• Charles Tilley on Opportunity Hoarding

Use these links or start at our Bookshop.org storefront to support local bookstores, and send a portion of the proceeds back to us.

Join our Patreon to support this work, and connect with us and other listeners to discuss these issues even further.

Let us know what you think of this episode, suggest future topics, or share your story with us – @integratedschls on twitter, IntegratedSchools on Facebook, or email us [email protected].

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

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

Music by Kevin Casey.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

For the second episode in our Brown v. Board at 67: The Stories We Tell Ourselves series, we talk with Dr. Noliwe Rooks (Cornell). Her book, Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education, as well as some of her more recent research around the pushback to school desegregation from communities of color and the decimation of the Black teaching corps following Brown v. Board, provide context in which to understand the full range of outcomes from the court decision.

While Dr. Rucker Johnson, in part 1, showed us some of the many benefits of desegregation, Dr. Rooks reminds us of many of the costs, especially to the Black community. She asks us to engage with these stories in order to understand the very real intent behind where we find ourselves today. It is only through changing the stories we tell, that we might envision a different, more equitable future for school integration.

Use these links or start at our Bookshop.org storefront to support local bookstores, and send a portion of the proceeds back to us.

Join our Patreon to support this work, and connect with us and other listeners to discuss these issues even further.

Let us know what you think of this episode, suggest future topics, or share your story with us – @integratedschls on twitter, IntegratedSchools on Facebook, or email us [email protected].

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

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

Music by Kevin Casey.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

As we approach the 67th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education (1954), we are revisiting our series looking at the stories we tell ourselves about Brown v. Board. The way we understand this case and its legacies do the work of making sense of our past and mapping out our future.

In this first episode, we are joined by Dr. Rucker Johnson (UC Berkeley). Dr. Johnson shares some of the research and findings in his book, Children of the Dream: Why School Integration Works. Using a longitudinal study of the children and grandchildren of Brown v. Board, Dr. Johnson shows us that desegregation did have profoundly important effects on individuals and communities even while we gave up on it too quickly.

Use these links or start at our Bookshop.org storefront to support local bookstores, and send a portion of the proceeds back to us.

Join our Patreon to support this work, and connect with us and other listeners to discuss these issues even further.

Let us know what you think of this episode, suggest future topics, or share your story with us – @integratedschls on twitter, IntegratedSchools on Facebook, or email us [email protected].

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

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

Music by Kevin Casey.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Aurelio Montemayor has been organizing parents for decades. His work at the Intercultural Research Development Association, or IDRA, as a family engagement coordinator has focused on a specific type of parent engagement, known as parent empowerment.

He defines the four ways parents are typically engaged in schools as:

1. As free labor and fundraisers.
2. Through education programs designed to help improve parenting
3. Through education programs designed for self improvement
4. Through meaningful parent / caregiver empowerment

This fourth form of parent engagement – parent empowerment, is the only form that he believes leads to school wide improvement for all kids. When done well, it can serve as an important tool for equity, but it requires that all parents feel empowered.

I’m joined by parent board member, Sarah Becker, to discuss what this looks like in practice, and how people with racial or economic privilege, who often enter schools with outsized empowerment, can act as allies.

LINKS:

• Intercultural Research Development Association
• Chicano Movement
• No Child Left Behind
• When Middle-Class Parents Choose Urban Schools: Class, Race, and the Challenge of Equity in Public Education by Lynn Posey-Maddox
• Despite The Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools by John B. Diamond and Amanda E. Lewis

Register for the Integrated Schools Book Club in July. We’ll be reading Heather McGhee’s The Sum of Us

Use these links or start at our Bookshop.org storefront to support local bookstores, and send a portion of the proceeds back to us.

Join our Patreon to support this work, and connect with us and other listeners to discuss these issues even further.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Our country has, at times, and in fits and starts, worked toward desegregation, but never meaningfully worked toward real integration. Desegregation is about the moving of bodies, the demographic percentages in a school building. Integration is about, in the words of David Kirkland, “fundamentally working to organize our society in a different way, where our differences are seen as spaces that we not only celebrate but LET BE, where this forms the vibrancy of our being as a society.” It is about decentering Whiteness, it is about creating new forms of shared power, and it is about recognizing the full humanity of every kid.

Historically, the ways White &/or privileged people talk about “good” vs. “bad” schools, the choices we make, both individually and collectively, about where to educate our children, and the ways we show up when we do enroll in global-majority schools have served to maintain our advantages and in turn, continue to oppress others.

This didn’t happen by accident.

Todays episode is an edit of our first ever webinar- The Integrated Schools Movement: Where We Begin. In it, we explore how our schools got to where they are now, and what role we play in either maintaining or disrupting this system. Members of our all-volunteer crew share personal stories of enrolling our kids in global-majority schools, and the joys and missteps we experience while showing up as parents and community members.

LINKS:

• A video of the webinar
• Slides shared during the webinar
• The original resource list shared after the webinar:
• Native Land Finder
• Episode: White Supremacy and Black Educational Excellence: Hidden Stories of the Integration Movement – Integrated Schools podcast featuring a conversation with Dr. Vanessa Siddle Walker and Dr. Elizabeth McRae facilitated by Dani McClain
• Vanessa Siddle Walker: The Lost Education of Horace Tate
• Elizabeth McRae: Mothers of Massive Resistance
• Episode: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy
• The current levels of segregation in our schools.
• The wealth gap – from Brookings, and The Washington Post
• Richard Rothstein – The Color of Law
• Michelle Alexander – The New Jim Crow
• EdBuild on the $23 billion funding gap between districts serving predominantly students of color vs White students.
• David Kirkland
• Episode: Kirkland on Integration
• Rucker Johnson
• The Children of the Dream
• Episode – Rucker Johnson and the Grandchildren of Desegregation
• Dr Kfir Mordechay
• Episode: Gentrification
• Dr. Amanda Lewis
• Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools with John Diamond
• Episode: Desegregation without Integration
• Engage with Integrated Schools
• Find your local chapter
• Sign up for our Parent-to-Parent program
• Listen to the podcast
• Join our Patreon
• Join our Facebook group
• Check out our full resource list
• Sign up for Book Club

Use these links or start at our Bookshop.org storefront to support local bookstores, and send a portion of the proceeds back to us.

Join our Patreon to support this work, and connect with us and other listeners to discuss these issues even further.

Let us know what you think of this episode, suggest future topics, or share your story with us – @integratedschls on twitter, IntegratedSchools on Facebook, or email us [email protected].

We are a proud member of The Connectd Podcast Network.

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.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Heather McGhee has been in public policy for the past 20 years, largely focused on economics. After nearly 16 years at Demos, a “think-and-do” tank, including four years as president, she realized that despite incredibly compelling economic research, at times, decision makers made decisions counter to what the best evidence showed. She took a leave of absence as president, and embarked on a journey to try to answer a simple question – Why can’t we have nice things? We, being all Americans, and nice things being things that most developed nations have managed to provide for their people – health care, parental leave, a social safety net, and, of course, a good school in every neighborhood.

Her journey took her across the country for conversations with all sorts of people, and led to the new book, The Sum of Us, which has been on the New York Times Bestseller’s list since was released. We are incredibly grateful to Heather McGhee for agreeing to come on the show in the midst of a serious promotional schedule. We are also honored that Integrated Schools makes an appearance in the book.

LINKS:

• The Sum Of Us
• Our Bookshop.org Storefront
• Demos – Public Policy “Think-and-Do” Tank
• Ta-Nehesi Coats – The Case for Reparations
• Dr. Gail Christopher
• HealOurCommunities.org
• Adrian Piper – Conceptual Artist
• Sherrilyn Ifill
• NAACP Legal Defense Fund
• Black Doll Test
• Debra Holoien
• Chase Bellingham and Matthew Hunt
• Kellogg Foundation
• The New Jim Crow – Michelle Alexander
• The Color of Law – Richard Rothstein
• Bryan Stevenson of Equal Justice Initiative

Don’t forget to register for our next webinar: How We Show Up, April 19th 5pm PDT / 8pm EDT. This free, 90 minute webinar will feature parents from Integrated Schools. We’ll be sharing personal stories of how we, as parents and caregivers with racial or economic privilege, work to center anti-racist integration when we arrive in integrating schools.

The Sum of Us is our next Book Club selection. Dates are in July, and you can register here.

Join our Patreon to support this work, and connect with us and other listeners to discuss these issues even further.

Let us know what you think of this episode, suggest future topics, or share your story with us – @integratedschls on twitter, IntegratedSchools on Facebook, or email us at [email protected].

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

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

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

Use these links or start at our Bookshop.org storefront to support local bookstores, and send a portion of the proceeds back to us.

Join our Patreon to support this work, and connect with us and other listeners to discuss these issues even further.

Let us know what you think of this episode, suggest future topics, or share your story with us – @integratedschls on twitter, IntegratedSchools on Facebook, or email us [email protected].

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.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands