A critical analysis of the film Remember the Titans, released in 2000, shows a preoccupation with nation and national identity through race and football. Set in 1971, it follows the desegregation and integration of a high school football team in Virginia. The film articulates a revisionist racial reconciliation reading of the Civil War based on white suffering and subsequent redemption. At its core it is a story about the progress of race relations and racism, framed as interpersonal relationships and segregation, in the United States.

Virginia's Pupil Placement Board was the most enduring vestige of the state's "massive resistance" movement in the 1950s. Following the example of other Southern states, the state's General Assembly passed the Pupil Placement Act in 1956 as part of a package of legislation designed to counteract the Supreme Court desegregation ruling. The Act, and the Pupil Placement Board that enforced it, lasted a decade, much longer than any of the other legislative initiatives born during that session, longer than the massive resistance movement itself.Whites, including many of Virginia's leaders, considered the Board to be ineffective at stemming the onslaught of integration, while African-Americans felt that the agency breeched their constitutional rights. From its inception to its dissolution in 1966, the Pupil Placement Board had to defend itself in a slew of desegregation cases all over Virginia, and the General Assembly changed the law several times to comply with court orders. Despite this adversity, the Board was consistently effective in stemming desegregation in Virginia throughout its tenure.

This dissertation documents the oral historical narratives of the lived school experiences of eleven participants in school at the passing of Brown v. The Board of Education. It is organized as a three-article dissertation where each article examines one topic that surfaced during my research. Article One critically interrogates the idea that integration over segregation is always in the best interest of students. It describes the positive experiences of Black students in segregated schools. Article Two describes the type of care Black teachers in segregated schools showed their students, which had a positive impact on their lives both academically and socially. It is this type of care that is often times missing in classrooms with White teachers in integrated schools. Article Three is a reflection about my journey as a Black, bilingual teacher in a teacher preparation program at a predominately White university. It highlights the importance of Black teacher voices in teacher preparation programs.

The study of contact and desegregation in post apartheid South Africa has not received adequate attention (Durrheim & Dixon, 2005b). Mondeor, a previously White populated suburb in the South of Johannesburg has been identified as being a racially diverse neighbourhood . By focusing on this suburb, the current study investigated whether or not residents interacted or mixed with members from other race groups and whether or not increased contact with members of different race groups in a residential neighbourhood would promote positive intergroup attitudes. Zones were identified for the purpose of this study whereby each Zone was predominantly comprised of a specific race group. Quantitative data was collected by means of distributing an intergroup attitude and contact questionnaire to the residents according to the zones in which they resided. A sample of N=197 respondents was obtained. The results indicated that there was generally no significant difference in contact for the Zones (racially exclusive zones and racially mixed zones), however, significant differences existed in levels of contact for the various race groups. In addition to this it was found that significant differences in contact existed for the various education levels of the respondents. As expected, a significant negative relationship (r = -0.16) was found to exist between contact and affective prejudice. In addition to these results, significant relationships were found to exist between affective prejudice and the following variables: Intergroup anxiety (r=0.37), and social distance (r=0.27). In conclusion, it was found that residents were not mixing as much as what was envisaged for a racially mixed neighbourhood. In addition to this, contact in and of itself was not found to be a predictive measure for affective prejudice. Thus, this finding lends support to Allport’s contact hypothesis making it clear that it is imperative to examine the nature of the contact as this may be pertinent in the promotion of the reduction of affective prejudice in intergroup contact situations.

Thesis advisor: Dennis L. Shirley / This research study is a historical analysis of Boston school desegregation viewed through the lens of Black Bostonians who gave rise to a Black Education Movement. Its purpose is to place Boston’s school desegregation history in a markedly different context than many of the narratives that evolved since Morgan v. Hennigan (1974). First, it provides a historical connection between the 18th and 19th century long road to equal schooling and the 20th century equal educational opportunity movement, both led by Black activists who lived in Boston. Second, it provides a public space for the voices of 20th century activists to tell their accounts of schooling in Boston. The narrators in this study attended Boston public schools and became leaders and foot soldiers in the struggle to dismantle a racially segregated school system. Ten case studies of Boston’s Black activists provide the foundation for this study. They recount, through oral history, a community movement whose goal was to save children attending majority Black schools from a system that was destroying them. Two theoretical perspectives, Critical Race Theory and Resiliency, inform the research design and findings. The findings shed light on agency from within the Black community, what changes were expected in the schools, the range of views regarding the intent of desegregation, and how systemic racism was the force that drove this community to dismantle a system that violated the 14th Amendment rights of Black students. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

This interdisciplinary study examines the issue of education in presidential election campaigns from 1968 through 2012. Historians of education have argued that the public's embrace of The National Commission on Excellence in Education report A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform (ANAR), in 1983 forced education onto the national agenda because political elites had to respond to voters' concerns about educational quality. Yet, historians of education have largely overlooked presidential election campaigns in their analysis of how education became a prominent political issue. In contrast, political scientists have focused a great deal on presidential election campaigns in seeking to understand the interaction between political elites and voters but have given little attention to the issue of education. This study integrates these two lines of inquiry to provide a better understanding of how education became a top-tier political issue and to better reveal the interactions between political elites and voters in that process. This study makes use of source materials that have received little scholarly examination. Internal campaign strategy documents reveal how political elites understood public opinion about education and how they sought to make use of that understanding to win elections. These underutilized sources reveal that historians have overemphasized the role of ANAR in the rise of education on the national political agenda. Long before education appeared in public opinion data as a top voter concern, strategists from both major political parties already wanted to push education onto the national political agenda. Yet, candidates were largely constrained from using education during the 1970s because they wanted to avoid engaging the controversial issue of de facto school desegregation. White voters were inconsistent on the issue: they claimed to support desegregation but took actions indicating they actually opposed desegregation. This made it difficult to craft an effective education message. When forced to discuss school desegregation, candidates of both parties employed a "quality education for all students" frame that deracialized the school desegregation debate and made education a safe issue to prime by the end of the decade. Beginning in the 1980s, Republicans used education for two electoral ends. First, they sought to use the recent transformation of the National Education Association (NEA) into a labor union and its endorsement of Democratic candidates to convince voters that the Democratic Party was beholden to radical special interest groups. Republican candidates also increased their priming of education in an attempt to close the gender gap arguing that women voters had a particular concern for the issue of education. Between 1990 and 2012, both parties wanted to use education to appeal to white voters. Republican candidates had long been committed to using education to soften their image. Now they began framing education as a civil rights issue in order to reassure white voters of their racial sensitivity. Meanwhile, Democratic candidates began framing education as an economic issue to reassure middle class white voters anxious about their children's future in the emerging global economy. A primary element in these electoral strategies was the idea that education was a "special" political issue. The "special" status rested on political elites' perceptions of voters' strong personal commitment to education and their nonpartisan attitudes toward specific policy positions. The lack of partisan correlation presented challenges for both parties but also unique opportunities to address campaign concerns related to a candidate's image, targeted voting blocs, and possible attacks on their opponents. The rise of the issue of education on the national agenda was often less about voters' concerns with educational quality and more about campaign strategy.

This Cultural Studies dissertation comes from extended research on three East Tennessee school districts as they attempted to integrate after the Supreme Court mandated an end to segregation in the United States. The study focuses on the experiences of former students of Austin High School, the segregated black school on the eastern edge of Knoxville, Tennessee. From looking at their schooling experiences in the context of the area's failed attempts to integrate, I address the myriad ways these participants and white citizens took up the term community to advance or block integration efforts. Community, I argue from this research, is a socially constructed discourse situated in a specific context of power that can simultaneously empower and oppress targeted groups in its creation. This study that centers on the stories of alumni of Austin High shows the negotiation of local power as defined through the efforts to maintain geographically separate spaces for each race in their schools and neighborhoods. In my research, I developed a methodology called historical ethnography to address these questions. By employing a historical ethnographic approach, I attempted to show that the history of education must take into account that schooling is not an experience lived and remembered, but one that is continually relived in every act of remembering. Therefore, it is not a standard historical account of a segregated school. It is an interdisciplinary exploration of how power can be recreated in schools through claims to community and how my participants engaged that power still in recounting their own school experiences.

In recent years, the responsibility for the desegregation of American public schools has transitioned from federal court mandates to school board programs and policies. There is widespread belief that this has resulted in the resegregation of schools across the country. One popular policy that is purported to provide the opportunity for voluntary integration, along with accountability for academic quality, is school choice. The purpose of this study was to consider the implications of such a policy in one large school district. There is an extensive body of research exploring who participates in school choice, how they make their choices, and why they choose the schools their children attend. In contrast, this study was designed to investigate the actual choices made by parents and the impact of those choices on the elementary schools in the district. This quantitative descriptive study examined the racial and socioeconomic composition of students in one district’s elementary schools during the 2009-2010 school year, and explored the extent to which the student populations in these schools would differ if all students had attended their attendance area schools, rather than participating in the district’s voluntary choice plan. The actual 2009-2010 demographics were compared to “counterfactual” demographics for each school. The researcher generated the counterfactual data by removing the students who chose to attend the school and adding back the students who chose to exit the school. These actual and counterfactual demographics for each school were used to compare dissimilarity indices calculated for the district’s elementary schools as they actually were, and as they theoretically would have been without the school choice program. Additionally, the quality of the schools parents chose was investigated. The results showed that, in this district, the school choice plan did not impact the level of integration in the elementary schools. The schools were moderately segregated with the school choice plan in place, but were also moderately segregated based on the counterfactual demographics that represented the district without school choice. Most parents (60%) chose high quality schools, as identified by the state’s accountability plan. However, parents who chose low achieving schools were disproportionately black and poor. Further research is warranted to determine if the mechanics of the school choice plan could be manipulated to improve the level of integration in the district, and to better understand the decisions made by some parents to send their children to low performing schools.

This dissertation fills a gap in the historiography of southern higher education by focusing on five university presidents and their role in the desegregation of a non-elite flagship university in the Upper South. While historian Melissa Keane has studied the presidential role at elite private southern universities during the initial phase of the desegregation process, no study has yet examined desegregation from the president’s office at a southern land-grant university. Building upon historian Peter Wallenstein’s thesis that desegregation is not a single event in an institution’s history but rather an ongoing process, I argue that it was also process that clearly involved the university presidents. Though much has been written about desegregation in Kentucky generally and the University of Kentucky specifically, and the pioneering African American students who desegregated UK, almost no scholarship has focused on the specific role of the UK presidents in the ongoing desegregation process. In much of the existing literature, the presidents are portrayed as spectators, they occupy a backseat, or they sit on the sidelines as the action unfolds. Often their story ends with the initial desegregation of UK’s graduate and undergraduate programs. Passive observers they were not, however. Herman Lee Donovan, Frank Graves Dickey, John Wieland. Oswald, Albert Dennis Kirwan, and Otis Arnold Singletary implemented policies that impacted the course of desegregation at the University of Kentucky.

The process of racial integration in schools is a challenge to education managers, educators, learners and parents. Educational institutions have been pressured to be involved in the process to speed up transformation in the South African educational sector. This project investigates the experiences and feelings of learners about the process of racial integration in their respective schools. A qualitative research approach was used as method of inquiry for the project. Learners were interviewed to get personal feedback on their day-to-day experiences in their respective schools. Observations were also recorded in those schools to get a clearer picture of what is happening in the three schools chosen for this research. The process of racial integration in schools is a challenge to education managers, educators, learners and parents. Educational institutions have been pressured to be involved in the process to speed up transformation in the South African educational sector. The process of racial integration in schools is a challenge to education managers, educators, learners and parents. Educational institutions have been pressured to be involved in the process to speed up transformation in the South African educational sector. This project investigates the experiences and feelings of learners about the process of racial integration in their respective schools. A qualitative research approach was used as method of inquiry for the project. Learners were interviewed to get personal feedback on their day-to-day experiences in their respective schools. Observations were also recorded in those schools to get a clearer picture of what is happening in the three schools chosen for this research. Interesting findings and conclusions that differ from school to school were reached. Black learners from School A are not entirely satisfied with the way the school is being run due to language problems. The process of integration is very slow and not visible. School B is trying hard to appear integrated but not hard enough because the fruits are not visible enough either. In school C, integration is visible and the situation is completely different from the other two schools. Recommendations, limitations and aspects of further research based on the findings of the study are discussed. The recommendations outlined supply guidelines to schools on initiating integration and implementing it properly in their schools. Challenges of the process are highlighted in the study and probable solutions outlined through recommendations. The study hopes to help schools initiate and become fully involved in the integration process. Education managers and educators must take it upon themselves to promote and practice multicultural education to enhance integration in their schools. / Dissertation (MEd (Education management))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Education Management and Policy Studies / unrestricted