Quote

During the decades after Brown v. Board of Education there was terrific progress. Tens of thousands of public schools were integrated racially. During that time the gap between black and white achievement narrowed.

Students of color who attended integrated schools in the decades immediately following Brown were more likely to graduate high school, go to college, earn higher wages, live healthier lifestyles, and not have a criminal record than their peers in segregated schools.

Sixty years after Brown v. Board of Education, it's time for us to take a hard look at the separate and unequal conditions that still exist in our schools and our communities and rededicate ourselves to fulfilling the promise of equal opportunity for all.

The Brown decision promised that every child, regardless of the color of his or her skin, would have unequivocal access to quality education and an equal opportunity to pursue his/her dreams.

In the Brown decision, the United States Supreme Court unanimously struck down the legal and moral footing of racially segregated public education in this country.

In the United States, the Supreme Court's decision of 1954, outlawing segregation in school systems, was greeted with mixed feelings of hope and skepticism by African-Americans.

Progress for black Americans depends on good schools because education is the last great equalizer.

Eventually, I won the right to attend school, but the prejudice was still there.

And that had a powerful appeal, particularly to those who had been denied the choice to stay on at school, to go to university, to be something else, other than going down the pit.

It was very clear to me in 1965, in Mississippi, that, as a lawyer, I could get people into schools, desegregate the schools, but if they were kicked off the plantations - and if they didn't have food, didn't have jobs, didn't have health care, didn't have the means to exercise those civil rights, we were not going to have success.