An African American Dilemma: A History of School Integration and Civil Rights in the North

Abstract

Zoë Burkholder, professor of educational foundations and director of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Education Project at Montclair State University, has written an essential account of the complex and often troubling history of America's implementation of meaningful school integration strategies. In particular, the author focuses upon the northern United States and its frequently uncomfortable legacy, as reflected in failed educational integration in its many diverse school districts, both urban and suburban. As Burkholder states, “the North is an imagined landscape as much as a physical one; a place that has long been associated with freedom and opportunity for African Americans. This study focuses specifically on communities north of the Mason Dixon line and east of the Mississippi River where the largest Black communities developed over the course of the first and second Great Migrations” (p. 5). As a social history, An African American Dilemma also explores, as is referenced on several occasions, the same racial divides and challenges that Gunnar Myrdal confronted in his classic An American Dilemma (1944). As Burkholder declares, her book “emphasizes white racism as the cause of the African American dilemma, or the question of whether school integration or separation provides the best route to equality and justice” (p. 8). The analysis follows a chronological format beginning with the common school movement in 1840. Organizationally, the chapters unfold in the following manner: introduction; chapter 1, “Caste Abolished: Integration for Freedom, 1840–1900”; chapter 2, “The Education That Is Their Due: Separation for Racial Uplift, 1900–1940”; chapter 3, “A Powerful Weapon: Integration for Equality, 1940–1965”; chapter 4, “Conflict in the Community: Separation for Black Power, 1966–1974”; chapter 5, “An Armageddon of Righteousness: Integration for Justice, 1975–Present”; and conclusion. The chapter titles reflect a broader intellectual focus than simply defining the integration debate through the prism of Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which falsely suggests that integration is a solved southern educational problem.