70 years later, 1 in 3 Black people say integration didn’t help Black students

Nearly 7 in 10 Americans say more should be done to integrate schools across the nation — a figure that has steadily climbed from 30 percent in 1973 and is now at its apex. But a deeper look into the views of both Black and White people shows skepticism about the success of Brown and mixed messages about how to move forward.

In its unanimous decision in Brown, the Supreme Court ruled segregated schools were unconstitutional and “inherently unequal,” combining five cases in which Black students and their schools had far fewer resources than their White peers — longer commutes, lower-quality classes, overcrowding, fewer opportunities and less money. Yet 1 in 3 Black Americans now say integration has failed to improve the education of Black students, a companion Post-Ipsos survey of Black Americans finds.

Today, about half of Black adults favor letting children attend neighborhood schools, even if it means most students would be of the same race — which, given housing patterns, is often the case.

White Americans also sometimes hold conflicting views. Nine in 10 Whites say they support the Brown decision, and nearly 2 in 3 say more needs to be done to integrate schools throughout the nation. Nonetheless, large segments of the White population oppose strategies that would help make that a reality. Nearly 8 in 10 White adults say it is better for children to go to neighborhood schools over diverse ones.

“The Brown decision speaks to our highest ideals as a nation. It’s who we say we want to be as a country,” said Stefan Lallinger, senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes school integration, whose grandfather was part of the team of civil rights attorneys who appeared before the Supreme Court in the Brown case. “Where the rubber meets the road is where people’s personal decisions about where to send their kids to school clash with those ideals.”

The decision, which was issued 70 years ago Friday, continues to hold a special place in American history. On Thursday, President Biden marked the anniversary by meeting with some of the surviving plaintiffs and their families from the five lawsuits that were consolidated into the Brown decision. On Friday, he addressed an NAACP event at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington marking the milestone.

“The Brown decision proves a simple idea. We learn better when we learn together,” Biden said.

The Brown decision focused on the value of mixing children of different races. But for many integration activists — then and now — the case is about a path to fair and equitable educational resources. Those legal battles continue.

Today’s complex views about schools and integration come amid persistent segregation that has risen in recent decades, changes in the legal landscape and the complicated dynamics of education and race in America today.

Because of Brown, school officials may no longer deliberately separate students by race — but under more recent Supreme Court orders, they aren’t allowed to deliberately mix them by race either. Integration advocates today have stopped looking to the federal courts for help and are pursuing state lawsuits instead. And some Black leaders have concluded that the answer is not integration at all but more money and more opportunity for high-poverty schools serving students of color.

“It never worked the way it was supposed to,” said Candace Northern, 43, of Sacramento, who is Black. She had a mixed experience with integration as a child growing up in the area. Now, as mother to four children who went to or will attend public schools, she sees how the system keeps most poor students of color concentrated in certain schools and wealthy, mostly White students in others.

“The intention behind [Brown] was good, but it really didn’t make sense to integrate the schools if you were still going to have separate neighborhoods and then only give the resources to the rich people,” she said. “It was more of an appeasement — ‘Let’s give these Black people something so they’ll shut up.’”

The evolution of a landmark ruling

The Brown decision was deeply polarizing, with massive resistance in the segregated South, where federal troops were at times required to escort Black students into what had been all-White schools, and violence in the North, too, as some White parents angrily protested busing orders that federal courts began issuing in the 1970s. Shortly after the 1954 ruling, a Gallup poll found 55 percent of Americans approved of Brown, while 40 percent disapproved.

But it succeeded in diversifying schools, with segregation rates falling through the 1970s and ’80s. Integration peaked around 1988; then courts began lifting their orders, and segregation began to rise again. A majority of Americans wrongly believe that schools are less racially segregated today than 30 years ago, The Post-Ipsos poll finds; in fact, by multiple measures, they are more segregated.

Jackie Beckley was raised in a small town in Kentucky and saw it all up close. Her father had to walk for miles and then travel by train to reach the nearest Black high school because the closer, White schools would not let Black children attend. Born in 1961, Beckley was among the first Black children to be admitted to White schools.

It wasn’t easy for her.

“You’re very much aware of the fact that you’re not like everybody else. You’re different,” she said. She remembered not being chosen as a cheerleader in elementary school despite her excellent gymnastic skills. She knew the reason and if there was any doubt, a White classmate said it out loud: “They didn’t pick her because she’s colored,” he told the class. Students were usually nice to her, she recalled, but if there was an argument, someone might hurl the n-word.

Over time, the Brown decision took on a revered status, one both liberals and conservatives cite as among the Supreme Court’s finest moments. By 1994, 87 percent of Americans approved of the ruling, and the new Post-Ipsos poll finds it just as popular today. But support is lower among Black people — about 8 in 10 say they approve of the decision. Asked if integration had improved the lives of Black students, 75 percent of White people say yes, but a smaller share — 63 percent — of Black people say the same — down from 70 percent in 1994.

Beckley understands why. Her own son attended an integrated school in suburban Columbus, Ohio, where she now lives, but she thinks more funding for schools serving students of color — “so they are educating the kids to the same standard” — is more important than creating diverse schools.

Isaac Heard, 74, is also skeptical after seeing the entire history of school integration unfold before him in Charlotte.

When Heard was growing up in Charlotte, his segregated neighborhood elementary school was so overcrowded that students attended in shifts — either morning or afternoon. “They had decided basically they weren’t going to build any more schools in the Black neighborhoods,” he recalled. His parents sent him to a private Catholic school instead.

Heard returned to public school in ninth grade and the experience was better, though still segregated. His school was economically if not racially diverse, and he recalls the teaching as excellent; in his senior year, four of his teachers had PhDs. He credited the talented Black women who had few career options other than teaching.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., school district did not fully desegregate until 1970, three years after Heard graduated and went off to Dartmouth College. But once it did, the district gained a reputation for running a successful busing program. In the 1990s, Heard’s own children attended the same district, and he said they received an excellent education.

“The biggest thing is they had role models, and resources were available,” he said. “If they were curious about something, they had access to it.”

Later, working in city planning in Charlotte, Heard saw things change again after the federal court order mandating desegregation was lifted in 1999 and the schools began to resegregate. While some wealthier Black families (including his own) now lived in diverse neighborhoods and attended racially diverse schools, lower-income Black and Hispanic families were concentrated in urban areas and their schools became segregated again.

Heard believes one answer is to spread affordable housing to wealthier neighborhoods, so the neediest students are spread out, but he said these proposals “raised the hackles in this community like you wouldn’t believe.”

Heard’s experience — segregation, integration, and partial segregation again — leaves him with mixed feelings about the impact of Brown. “There’s a generation of kids who really benefited from it, but it’s slowly receding in terms of its positive impact, particularly among lower-income populations,” he said.

A tangle of contradictions

The views of White Americans are also wrapped in contradictions. A wide majority says they support the Brown decision, but many oppose leading ideas for integration today.

Those include adding low-income housing in the suburbs and other high-income areas (43 percent opposed), redrawing boundaries to create more racially diverse districts (45 percent opposed) and requiring schools to bus some students to neighboring districts (70 percent opposed). Only one strategy enjoys support from a large majority (71 percent) — more regional magnet schools with specialized courses (24 percent of Whites are opposed).

Among Black Americans, there is majority support for all four strategies — with at least 7 in 10 backing the proposals for mixed-income housing, redrawing boundaries and magnet schools.

At the same time, nearly 8 in 10 White people say they support “letting students go to the local school in their community, even if it means that most of the students would be of the same race,” while 17 percent favor “transferring students to other schools to create more integration, even if it means that some students would have to travel out of their communities to go to school.”

Elaine Burkholder, 44, who is raising five children in a rural community in central Pennsylvania, did not hesitate when asked her views on Brown. “It was a good decision,” she said. “It’s definitely good to have integration, open the children up to different viewpoints and that sort of thing.”

She said she is not concerned about any segregation that persists today because the law is no longer barring children from going to school together.

“As long as you have the ability to move and stuff you can probably get your children into a decent school district,” she said. “It’s pretty well a personal choice at this point, where your children go to school.”

Burkholder, whose children attend a private Christian school, was not particularly concerned that some families cannot afford to move to another school district. “I’m a little more of a pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” Burkholder said. “I like to see people working to get where they want to go.”

The way forward

The contradictions inherent in public opinion have given rise to conflicting strategies about what should come next.

David Banks, the chancellor of the New York City schools, the nation’s largest school system, who is Black, attended integrated schools in Queens as a child but does not see integration as the answer for children in New York City today. Today, 24 percent of the students in the city schools are Black, and 41 percent are Hispanic. Just 15 percent of students are White. He said the path to a better education for a student of color cannot be sitting next to a White student; there aren’t enough White students to go around.

“I do not believe Black kids need to go to school with White kids to get a good education. I fundamentally reject that,” he said in an interview.

Instead of integration, Banks favors directing more money and adding programs to high-poverty schools serving students of color and providing more opportunities for advanced coursework in low-income areas.

But others say students of color will never get what they need if so many are isolated in high-poverty school districts. A new generation of legal advocates is now targeting the boundary lines that separate school districts, which drive most of the racial and economic segregation today.

They’ve also shifted legal strategy. Supreme Court rulings issued in the years since Brown make success in federal courts unlikely, they say, so unlike their counterparts from past decades, they are focused on state courts.

A lawsuit in New Jersey is challenging district boundary lines based on a provision in the state constitution. The parties have been negotiating for months in hopes of reaching a settlement. Another case challenging segregation in the Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., schools has been working its way through the Minnesota courts for nearly a decade. A lawsuit in New York City relies on the state constitution to challenge admissions policies that place students into gifted and advanced programs, creating a two-tiered education system that hurts Black and Hispanic students.

A new organization called Brown’s Promise is looking for other potential lawsuits, possibly based on state constitutions that guarantee a “thorough and efficient” public education.

“Any meaningful definition of a ‘thorough education’ has to mean learning to live, work and thrive in a multiracial community,” said Ary Amerikaner, co-founder of Brown’s Promise.

She pointed to research that shows the post-Brown integration years succeeded in raising achievement levels of Black students.

“We cannot keep concentrating poverty in a small number of districts and expecting the adults to work miracles,” she said. She said it’s worth fighting for more money for these schools — adding that a little more money probably won’t help, but a lot more would.

“But even that cannot create the sort of social capital that we know comes from access to communities that are historically more privileged.”

The Washington Post-Ipsos poll of 1,029 U.S. adults was conducted April 9-16 and included a partially overlapping sample of 1,331 non-Hispanic Black adults. The margin of sampling error among Americans overall and Black Americans is plus or minus 3.2 percentage points; among the 703 White Americans the margin of error is 3.9 points.