Read the PDF of our statement here.
Earlier today, researchers at UCLA and Penn State released Southern Schools More Than Half a Century After the Civil Rights Revolution, a new report reviewing segregation trends in Southern public schools between 1970 and 2014. The report concludes that the significant gains in school integration made after the civil rights movement are now being reversed, with an increase in the number of Black and Brown students who attend intensely segregated schools. NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. President and Director-Counsel Sherrilyn Ifill released the following statement:
“This incisive and important new report makes clear that 63 years after Brown v. Board, we must make a renewed commitment to ensuring that every child in America has access to quality, integrated schools. As this research shows, strong federal support for integration had a meaningful effect on public schools in the decades after Brown. But that support has waned in recent years, endangering the real progress that was won during the civil rights era. And with the current administration in Washington lauding the importance of ‘school choice,’ the danger of abandoning our public schools to greater segregation has only grown. We must not fail Black and Brown students by refusing to heed what we already know: that separate is inherently unequal. This report is a call to action, one that we simply cannot ignore.”
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Founded in 1940, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) is the nation’s first civil and human rights law organization and has been completely separate from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1957—although LDF was originally founded by the NAACP and shares its commitment to equal rights. LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute is a multi-disciplinary and collaborative hub within LDF that launches targeted campaigns and undertakes innovative research to shape the civil rights narrative. In media attributions, please refer to us as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund or LDF.
