The Challenge of Liberal Reform: School Desegregation, North and South-U.S.

This document collection introduces a critical yet underappreciated moment in the history of the civil rights movement, when national concensus over the future of school desegregation began to break down. Students will better understand some of the unresolved issues from civil rights struggles of the 1960s and how it was that despite unprecedented gains in breaking down segregated patterns of schooling in the rural South, separate and unequal public education persisted in the United States for decades afterward. Students are guided through their analysis of the primary sources with an author-provided learning objective, central question, and historical context.