Overturning Opportunity

In the spring of 1954 (like so many Black families), mine waited anxiously for the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision

- Marian Wright Edelman

My father and I talked about it and what it would mean for my future and the future of millions of other Black children who were attending segregated but unequal Black schools. He died the week before Brown was decided. But I and many other children were able, in later years, to walk through the new and heavy doors that Brown slowly and painfully opened.

It was a transforming time that set into motion a spate of other challenges to Jim Crow laws that changed America. But while Brown v. Board cracked open doors of opportunity that had previously been locked shut, the doors to true educational equality, were never opened all the way and never wide enough for millions of American children to enter. This year many families once again waited anxiously for a Supreme Court decision that might impact their children's future. But this time, many worried that the Supreme Court's decision striking down race-based affirmative action college admissions programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina would pull doors of opportunity closed-most especially for the millions of children of color who attend schools in the United States today that are still largely segregated and still unequal.