Traditional narratives of black educational history suggest that
African Americans offered a unified voice concerning
Brown v.
Board of Education. Jack Dougherty counters this
interpretation, demonstrating that black activists engaged in
multiple, overlapping, and often conflicting strategies to advance
the race by gaining greater control over schools.
Dougherty tells the story of black school reform movements in
Milwaukee from the 1930s to the 1990s, highlighting the multiple
perspectives within each generation. In profiles of four leading
activists, he reveals how different generations redefined the
meaning of the
Brown decision over time to fit the
historical conditions of their particular struggles. William Kelley
of the Urban League worked to win teaching jobs for blacks and to
resettle Southern black migrant children in the 1950s; Lloyd Barbee
of the NAACP organized protests in support of integrated schools
and the teaching of black history in the 1960s; and Marian McEvilly
and Howard Fuller contested--in different ways--the politics of
implementing desegregation in the 1970s, paving the way for the
1990s private school voucher movement. Dougherty concludes by
contrasting three interpretations of the progress made in the fifty
years since
Brown, showing how historical perspective can
shed light on contemporary debates over race and education
reform.