The United States Supreme Court's 1954 landmark decision, Brown v. Board of Education, set into motion a process
of desegregation that would eventually transform American public schools. This book provides a comprehensive and
up-to-date assessment of how Brown's most visible effect--contact between students of different racial groups--has
changed over the fifty years since the decision.
Using both published and unpublished data on school enrollments from across the country, Charles Clotfelter uses
measures of interracial contact, racial isolation, and segregation to chronicle the changes. He goes beyond previous
studies by drawing on heretofore unanalyzed enrollment data covering the first decade after Brown, calculating
segregation for metropolitan areas rather than just school districts, accounting for private schools, presenting
recent information on segregation within schools, and measuring segregation in college enrollment.
Two main conclusions emerge. First, interracial contact in American schools and colleges increased markedly over
the period, with the most dramatic changes occurring in the previously segregated South. Second, despite this change,
four main factors prevented even larger increases: white reluctance to accept racially mixed schools, the multiplicity
of options for avoiding such schools, the willingness of local officials to accommodate the wishes of reluctant
whites, and the eventual loss of will on the part of those who had been the strongest protagonists in the push
for desegregation. Thus decreases in segregation within districts were partially offset by growing disparities
between districts and by selected increases in private school enrollment.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Preface
Introduction
Chapter One
Walls Came Tumbling Down
Chapter Two
The Legacies of Brown and Milliken
Chapter Three
Residential Segregation and "White Flight"
Chapter Four
The Private School Option
Chapter Five
Inside Schools: Classrooms and School Activities
Chapter Six
Higher Learning and the Color Line
Chapter Seven
So What?
Methodological Appendix
Notes
References
Index
