60-Year Journey from ‘Brown’

Julianne Malveaux

By Julianne Malveaux
NNPA Columnist



It was legend that if you did not understand rules, she would beat them into you, but her method was unlimited interrogation, not physical correction (much). In any case, I landed in Moss Point 15 years after the Supreme Court ruled that legal segregation was illegal.  However, by ruling that the Brown decision should be implemented with “all deliberate speed,” many towns in Mississippi saw this as a signal to “take your own sweet time.”  I ended up attending all-Black Magnolia High School, while the all-White Moss Point High School was in rather close proximity. A year later, Magnolia became the town’s junior high school, and Moss Point High was the school for everyone.


On the days that Auntie Annie Mae had to go to the White schools, she woke up muttering that this was not integration, and mumbling that “all these years after Brown” integration had not happened in Moss Point schools.  Since the “kid breaker” didn’t really yell, she took her frustration out on anyone who would listen, talking legalisms, history, and the way it ought to be. Occasionally Auntie would say, “at least we aren’t in Virginia,” then she would talk about the schools that actually closed rather than admit Black students.  In that state developed a plan of “massive resistance” that denied funds to integrated schools that had the effect of denying education to Black children for at least four years.

In 1969, most African Americans had experienced de facto segregation, but few Californians had experienced the de jure segregation that Brow ended.  Without the  Mississippi experienced, I would have thought that segregation was as much a fairy tale as Santa Claus, or as distant as “the old days.  Neither fairy tale, nor distant fact, de jure segregation is alive and well today.

Today, schools are segregated by income and zip code, not by race.  Cash-strapped urban school systems, largely funded by eroding property taxes, have fewer resources than well-funded suburban schools.  There are also oases in urban public schools where higher income parents come together to fund activities at their neighborhood schools, such as sports and music that have been eliminated from other public schools for financial reasons.


There are dozens of other consequences to defacto segregation, including the racial achievement gap and unequal access to scholarships, internships, networking, and employment opportunities.  Brown opened the door and, by ending de facto segregation, changed the terms and conditions of African American life.  It got us to the starting line, but now, 60 years later, we are still a long way from the finish line.
