Inequality and Schooling

The year 2014 marks both the 60th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education and the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren read the Court’s decision rejecting the “separate but equal” principle that had governed the Court’s treatment of race matters since the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896. Although the Brown decision applied specifically to education, its promise was to undermine the legal foundation upon which systems of segregation and racial inequality rested. Brown struck down the legitimacy of laws that segregated and differentially treated citizens based on race, and this measure opened doors to many previously excluded groups, including women and the differently abled. Our commemoration of this landmark decision is twofold. Through a symposium and following panel discussions, we hope to highlight both the positive social changes resulting from the passage of civil rights legislation and the limitations of judicial solutions to redress inequalities in our social system