The Girls Who Paved the Way
The true heroes of school desegregation were the girls and women who laid the foundations for Brown v. Board of Education.
By Gabrielle Levy Political ReporterJune 1, 2018, at 6:00 a.m.
BROWN V. BOARD OF Education of Topeka, the landmark 1954 schools desegregation Supreme Court decision, has been called on of the most consequential court rulings in American history.
But aside from a handful of main players – Thurgood Marshall, the founder of the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, who argued Brown v. Board before the court and eventually became its first black associate justice, and perhaps Ruby Bridges, one of the "desegregation firsts" whose integration of a New Orleans school was commemorated in a Norman Rockwell painting – few of those who worked to strike down school segregation are known to the general public.
In her new book, "A Girl Stands at the Door: The Generation of Young Women Who Desegregated America's Schools," historian Rachel Devlin illuminates the largely unknown lives of the girls who made up the vast majority of plaintiffs in desegregation cases, and the women who battled racist school officials, their skeptical neighbors and sometimes even the NAACP to force desegregation into the public consciousness. Devlin recently spoke to U.S. News about the unsung but critical role these young women played in changing the course of American history. Excerpts:
Many people would be surprised to learn that the desegregation of public schools was so largely driven by girls and women. What about this fight made it so attractive to women – or unattractive to men working in other areas of civil rights?
Women and girls showed a stronger commitment to the idea or the ideal of school desegregation. To them it seemed very simple: they said, 'It was just wrong,' 'It had to change.' They were able to articulate their commitment to school desegregation in part because they could envision themselves in white schools.
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https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2018-06-01/the-unknown-history-of-the-women-and-girls-who-made-school-desegregation-a-reality?emailed=1&src=usn_thereport
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