Missing Teachers, Impaired Communities: The Unanticipated Consequences of Brown v. Board of Education on the African American Teaching Force at the Precollegiate Level

Abstract

In 1954, the year of the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, approximately 82,000 African American teachers were responsible for the education of the nation's two million African American public school students (Hawkins, 1994). A decade later, over 38,000 Black teachers and administrators had lost their positions in 17 southern and border states (Ethridge, 1979; Holmes, 1990). Between 1975 and 1985, the number of Black students majoring in education declined by 66%; and another 21,515 Black teachers lost their jobs between 1984 and 1989 (Smith, 1987). As of 1991, approximately 232,000 African American teachers constituted 8% of the teaching force, while African American students constituted 16.4% of the national K-12 student population (Hawkins, 1994; National Center for Education Statistics, 1991). If current trends continue, projections are that by the year 2000, 35% of all public school students in the United States will be of minority background; however, only 5% of teachers will be members of minority groups (American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, 1987; Recruiting New Teachers, Inc., 1992) (see Table I).TABLE ITHE LOSS OF AFRICAN AMERICAN TEACHERS FOLLOWING BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION: A SNAPSHOTPre-1954--Approximately 82,000 African American teachers were responsible for the education of 2 million African American children.1954--The Brown v. Board of Education decision was handed down.1954-1965--More than 38,000 African American teachers and administrators in 17 southern and border states lost their jobs.1975-1985--The number of African American students majoring in education declined by 66%.1984-1989--An estimated 37,717 minority candidates and teachers--including 21,515 African Americans--were eliminated as a result of newly installed teacher certification and teacher education program admissions requirements.By 2000--Only 5% of the teaching force will be of minority background, while 35% of the student population will be people of color.Forty years after Brown, most U.S. students go through 12 years of schooling without ever having met a minority teacher, and approximately 70% of all minority students continue to attend predominantly or exclusively minority schools (Hawkins, 1994). Through no fault that can be attributed to the positive aspects of the 1954 decision itself, it is clear that African Americans have failed to get the results they envisioned. This is especially true with regard to the African American teaching force. Concurring with Mercer and Mercer (1986), who claim that [operating] a public school system without Black teachers is [like teaching] White supremacy without saying a word (p. 105), this article argues that the loss of African American teachers in public school settings has had a lasting negative impact on all students, particularly African American students and the communities in which they reside. It further maintains that although the shrinking African American teacher pool has been attributed to several factors, it is partly a fall-out of how Brown was implemented by White American policy makers.THE ALMOST-LOST PROFESSIONThe message transmitted by the Brown decision, and by the desegregation strategies implemented to carry out its mandates, implied that the White education system was intrinsically better than the Black education system. The latter was deemed expendable in the interest of the cause of public school desegregation. White school systems did have better facilities and greater operational resources--the primary areas in which segregated, separate-but-equal school systems were decidedly not equal--however, high-quality facilities do not necessarily translate into a better academic system. The quality of teaching and the degree of concern for students' welfare shown by African American teachers within those facilities are crucial factors that cannot be overlooked. …