From the Editors

Vicki L. Ruiz and Harvard Sitkoff

Reprinted from the OAH Magazine of History
15 (Winter 2001). ISSN 0882-228X
Copyright (c) 2001, Organization of American Historians

"The only history benefitting a democratic society is one that inspires a frank and searching dialogue with the past." --Gary Nash

This special issue of the OAH Magazine of History grew out of a National Park Service theme study entitled Racial Deseg- regation in Public Education, the historical text co-authored by Waldo Martin, Patricia Sullivan, and ourselves. While impossible to replicate our collective draft within the space of a journal, we do attempt to encapsulate the themes and resources vital in addressing a truly national narrative regarding school segregation and desegregation. Harvard Sitkoff's"Segregation, Desegregation, Resegregation: African American Education, A Guide to the Literature" provides an incisive historiographic essay complete with extensive bibliography. Sitkoff reminds us that"history is not written in a vacuum," but that scholars respond to, as well as reflect, the times in which they live. Complementing the Sitkoff essay,"Roberts, Plessy, and Brown: The Long Hard Struggle Against Segregation," by James Horton and Michele Gates Moresi, offers a sweeping chronicle of the historic efforts by African Americans for educational equity. We are also fortunate to include an excerpt of primary sources from Judy Yung's Unbound Voices: A Documentary History of Chinese Women in San Francisco."Mary Tape, An Outspoken Woman" reveals the courage and candor of a nineteenth-century immigrant mother who deeply desired an education for her U.S. born daughter. Further complicating the categories of segregation, Julie Davis's"American Indian Boarding School Experiences: Recent Studies from Native Perspectives" concisely reviews the monographs available for teaching about the experiences of Native American children in federal off-reservation boarding schools. From the late nineteenth century to the early decades of the twentieth century, education for American Indian children could mean not only segregation, but literal incarceration. Finally,"South By Southwest: Mexican Americans and Segregated Schooling, 1900-1950," by Vicki L. Ruiz, provides a brief overview of educational segregation of Mexican American children--segregation often cloaked in the language of"Americanization"--and of two significant legal challenges to this discriminatory practice, the Lemon Grove case of 1931 and Méndez v. Westminister (1946).

We thank Laura K. Muñoz for her innovative lesson plan "Separate But Equal?: A Case Study of Romo v. Laird and Mexican American Education" and the National Park Service for allowing us to reprint an excerpt from the dynamic Teaching with Historic Places web site, "From Canterbury to Little Rock: The Struggle for Educational Equality for African Americans." It is our hope that this issue expands the conversation on the history of racial desegregation in public education, a legacy rooted in, but not exclusive to, African American history. Issues of educational equity remain with us, affecting all Americans across region, gender, race, and class. We take heart in the words of historian Peggy Pascoe as she reflects on the nature of history "as a kind of conversation between the past and present in which we travel through time to examine the cultural assumptions--and the possibilities--of our own society as well as the societies before us."

Acknowledgements. This issue would not have been possible without the logistical support and sound counsel of the OAH staff, especially Susan Ferentinos. We also acknowledge the unflagging generosity of Carol Shull, John Sprinkle, and Susan Salvatore of the National Park Service. Ruthanne Lum McCunn, moreover, graciously gave permission to reprint the Tape family illustration, and Cheryl Brown Henderson of the Brown Foundation has allowed us to reprint the James Horton and Michele Gates Moresi essay, which previously appeared in the Brown Quarterly. Finally, we are indebted to our contributors, Julie Davis, Laura K. Muñoz, and Judy Yung. ¡Otra vez, gracias por todo!

Vicki L. Ruiz is a professor of history and the chair of the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at Arizona State University. In July 2001 she will become a professor of history and Chicano/Latino studies at University of California, Irvine. Her recent book From Out of the Shadows was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Book of 1998. Ruiz and co-editor Ellen DuBois have recently completed the third edition of Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women's History (2000). Recipients of a Ford Foundation grant, she and Virginia Sánchez Korrol are co-editors of Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia, under contract with Indiana University Press. Ruiz is currently a member of the Council of the American Historical Association and a past member of the Executive Board of the Organization of American Historians.

Harvard Sitkoff, a professor of history at the University of New Hampshire, is the author or editor of numerous books, including A New Deal for Blacks (1978); The Struggle for Black Equality, 1954-1992 (1993); Fifty Years Later: The New Deal Reevaluated (1984); A History of Our Time, with William Chafe (5th ed., 1999); Postwar America: A Student Companion (2000); and Perspectives on Modern America: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century (2001). His articles and essays have appeared in the American Quarterly, Journal of American History, Journal of Southern History, and Wilson Quarterly, among others, and he is the co-author of the textbook The Enduring Vision (4th ed., 2000). A frequent lecturer abroad, Sitkoff has been awarded the Fulbright Commission's John Adams Professorship of American Civilization in the Netherlands and the Mary Ball Washington Professorship of American History in Ireland.