The History of Public School Desegregation: A National Park Service Perspective

Robert G. Stanton

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

In October 1949, when I was growing up near Fort Worth, Texas, a group of parents filed suit in federal court to ensure equal access to school facilities for their children within the Euless Independent School District. Without consulting any parents, local school officials had proposed to close down the area's segregated Mosier Valley School and bus the children to schools in Fort Worth. When the parents heard of the school district's plans, they refused to have their children transferred to the Fort Worth schools and, with the assistance of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), filed suit. Even if the facilities in Fort Worth were substantially better than the local school district would provide, the parents argued that their children must be permitted to attend the local schools. Eventually the court agreed that transferring the students to a different school district while operating schools for white children violated the "separate but equal" convention that was the justification for segregated school systems. As a result of this suit, a new segregated brick school building was built in 1953 to replace the substandard wooden building that had served as the only local school open to African Americans.

The Mosier Valley School lawsuit was one of many filed by African Americans and other minority groups during the period after World War II in order to challenge the so-called "separate but equal" system of segregated schools in the United States. Led locally by concerned parents and educators and nationally by a network of legal scholars and activists, the fight to desegregate public education in the United States is one of the most significant events in the modern civil rights movement.

In recognition of the importance of the desegregation story to American history, the National Park Service now operates two National Historic Sites associated with watershed events in this history: the Brown v. Board of Education site in Topeka, Kansas, and the Little Rock Central High site in Little Rock, Arkansas. Other sites, such as the Moton School in Farmville, Virginia, have been recognized by their designation as National Historic Landmarks.

National Park Service leadership in the identification and documentation of places associated with desegregation is also illustrated by the recent completion of a National Historic Landmark theme study on racial desegregation in public education. The study describes the powerful and moving history of school desegregation efforts by Native, Asian, Mexican, and African Americans ranging from the first legal challenge in Massachusetts (1849) through the aftermath of the Brown decision, the integration of Central High School, racial quotas, busing, and beyond. The study recommends consideration of several places as National Historic Landmarks, including the home of activist Daisy Bates in Little Rock, Arkansas; a segregated library at the University of Oklahoma; and three buildings at Howard University in Washington, DC, where NAACP lawyers consulted with black scholars on the damaging effects of segregation. This National Historic Landmark theme study was the foundation for the essays contained in this issue of the OAH Magazine of History. This issue also contains a lesson plan developed through the National Park Service's Teaching With Historic Places program. One of more than sixty available lesson plans designed for a middle school audience, "From Canterbury to Little Rock: The Struggle for Educational Equality for African Americans" compares the experience of African American Connecticut students in the 1830s with that of Arkansas students in 1957 to tell the story of the struggle for equal education. Unfortunately, the segregated Mosier Valley public school no longer exists on the original site to illustrate the bravery of those Mosier Valley parents who challenged an unequal educational system in search of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution for all citizens. However, this small victory in Texas was echoed by many other legal actions and forms of protest by diverse groups across the country. I am justly proud of the National Park Service's cooperative endeavor with both the Organization of American Historians and the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers to complete this ambitious theme study and the associated efforts to recognize these diverse historic places through National Historic Landmark designation and listing on the National Register of Historic Places. With your help, American school children will learn of the challenges that generations of parents and students faced in the search for equal education.

At press time (January 2001), Robert G. Stanton was the director of the National Park Service, a position he has held since 1997. In this position, he has policy and administrative responsibility for the National Park Service's 379 natural, cultural, and recreational areas, which receive 288 million visitors each year. Mr. Stanton has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, the International Salute Award for National Service, and the U.S. Department of the Interior's highest honor, the Distinguished Service Award.