THE UNFINISHED LEGACY OF BROWN V BOARD OF EDUCATION AT 70

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”

–Martin Luther King, Jr.

On May 6, 2024, the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford and The Stanford Institute for Advancing Just Societies will host a conference to reflect on the legacy of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision and chart the unfinished business of school integration. This event was made possible by generous support from Stanford Accelerator for Learning, Stanford Center for Racial Justice, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford Graduate School of Education, and Stanford Law School.

May 17, 2024, marks the 70th anniversary of the 1954 Brown decision, in which the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that, “in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” This decision marked a monumental shift in American history.

That landmark ruling led to a dramatic decline in school segregation from the 1960s to the 1980s. The shift from segregated to more integrated schools significantly changed the course of Black children’s lives, leading to greater educational attainment and better future economic outcomes. These benefits echoed across generations, improving the lives of the children and grandchildren of Black students who attended integrated schools as a result of the Brown decision.

But the legacy of the Brown decision faces challenges in today’s increasingly diverse society. Since the late 1980s, progress on addressing segregation has stalled; racial and economic segregation has grown steadily in the last 35 years. Despite clear evidence of the benefits of racial and economic integration, school segregation remains one of the most stubborn social problems of our time.

The conference, led by sean f. reardon (Stanford) and Ann Owens (USC), will bring together educators, policymakers, and leading scholars and legal experts to distill the lessons of recent research on segregation and craft a new agenda for addressing racial and economic segregation in American schools.