This sampling of newspaper editorials from the mid-1950s reflects the range of public opinion and responses to the Brown decision.

This 1954 statement from Tom Brady, a founder of the White Citizens' Council movement, expresses opposition to the Brown decision.

This lesson plan will introduce students to the political, social, and economic issues surrounding school desegregation using oral histories from those who experienced it firsthand. They will learn about the history of the "separate but equal" U.S. school system, the 1971 Swann case which forced Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) to integrate, and the recent decision to discontinue busing for racial integration in Charlotte-Mecklenburg. They will compare and contrast neighborhood schools with schools integrated through busing, and listen to oral histories of students who have experienced both types of schools in CMS. Through discussion with classmates, they will create a list of the negatives and positives of both neighborhood and integrated schools. Students will then write an argumentative essay explaining which type of schools they would support, and will defend their argument with evidence from the oral histories.

In this lesson, students will contrast and compare de facto and de jure segregation, listening to oral history examples of each from residents of Charlotte, North Carolina. Students will then brainstorm solutions to each type of segregation, and will discuss why de facto segregation can persist even after de jure segregation is eliminated.

A 1967 federal court order resulted in this document, which mandated school desegregation in Birmingham.

The Supreme Court's landmark opinion overturned its earlier ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson and declared segregated schools unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court's opinion in Brown II reflects the struggle between federal and state governments on how and when school desegregation would occur.

This collection of excerpts from legislation and court decisions documents key phases of the legal struggle to gain and implement equal education.

Melba Patillo Beals was one of nine black students who desegregated Little Rock's Central High School in 1957. In this interview, recorded for Eyes on the Prize, Beals describes her tumultuous experience.

Sylvia Mendez recalls the conditions that led Mexican Americans to sue for desegregation in the 1940s in this segment from Mendez vs. Westminster: Para Todos los Niños/For All the Children, from KOCE-TV.

In this unit, students will research the history of school desegregation, and bring that history to life by listening to oral histories of North Carolinians who lived through desegregation. Students will then become historians, recording their own oral histories with relatives or community members, and reflecting on the experience through writing. The oral histories will be collected into a final project and placed in the school’s library for students and teachers to study in the future.

In this video segment, recorded for Eyes on the Prize, activist Robert Moses talks about the Mississippi voting rights campaign.

In this lesson, students will learn about the challenges faced by the first students to desegregate Southern schools, such as racism, verbal harassment, and physical threats. They will hear oral histories telling the story of desegregation pioneers in Alabama and North Carolina, and critically analyze images of school desegregation. Students will then write a narrative from the point of view of a black student desegregating a white school, exploring how the student may have felt about the experience.

In this video segment, produced for the Levine Museum of the New South, Joseph De Laine Jr. and Ophelia De Laine Gona describe conditions in segregated South Carolina schools.

This segment from American Experience: Simple Justice profiles Charles Houston's strategy for attacking segregation and how he trained the legal team that eventually argued the Brown case.

This segment from American Experience: Simple Justice explores the issue at the heart of Brown v. Board of Education: whether the Fourteenth Amendment applied to segregated schools.

This segment from American Experience: Simple Justice explores the dynamics and arguments among the Supreme Court justices who ruled in Brown v. Board of Education.

In this video segment, recorded for Eyes on the Prize, poet Sonia Sanchez recalls the pivotal moment when she first heard civil rights leader Malcolm X speak.

In the 1970s, the public school system of Charlotte-Mecklenburg County in North Carolina was ordered by the federal courts to desegregate. The district then faced busing, lawsuits, protests, and riots during its struggle with the issue of racial quotas. The district is currently coping with the controversial plan to end busing for racial balance and return to a geographically-based student assignment plan.

Listen to members of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg community candidly discuss race, desegregation, busing, and education as you experience the story of race in Charlotte's schools.