Research on the current condition of education within the black community suggests that there are significant obstacles to the academic success of black children. Disparities between black student’s performance, when compared to others show that blacks fall behind other students on standardized test scores, rate of those college attendance and completing high school educations. An exploration of contemporary issues in black education and black student academic achievement will help clarify the scope of these problems and possible underlying causes. It is hypothesized that the challenges facing today’s black student’s academic achievement have their roots in the events that occurred during the desegregation process of the mid to late 1960’s. The educational history of the Sam Schwarz School in Hempstead, Texas will serve as a case study of how the desegregation process represented a collective trauma experienced by Hempstead’s black community. / text