Introduction

Abstract

The journey by African Americans to achieve quality education began with passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution providing the freedmen citizenship and protection from hostile state action under its due process and equal protection clauses. This article traces the plight of Black Americans to gain access to quality schools under the political control of a rarely supportive White majority. The authors tell of the forces active in reducing the impact and effectiveness of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court that declared the separate but equal doctrine made by an earlier Court that state enforced racially segregated schooling was unconstitutional. They reviewed the efforts of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to reverse the Court’s separate but equal doctrine and move the country through the courts for 50 years to produce quality desegregated public education for all children. Also reviewed were the forces actively involved in efforts to reduce the effectiveness of the Court’s decision and recent changes by the Court in its interpretations of the original Brown decision. We expect the articles chosen for this special issue on the 5th anniversary of the Brown decision will help tell a more complete story of this journey by African Americans to achieve quality public education for their children.