However, for a briefmoment in 1968, Black parents in the Ocean Hill–Brownsville sec-tion of New York exercised community control over the publicschools (Podair, 2003).
This is an interesting piece of NYC history. I believe that the Ocean Hill school district experimental led to the 1968 teacher's strike.
This is because wealth is a source of political andsocial power, influences access to capital for new businesses, andprovides insurance against fluctuations in labor market income.
This is the ugly reality of power in the United States. Much of wealth is handed down and inherited. Look at the most powerful political families in this country on both sides of the political spectrum. The Kennedys the Bush families has used their wealth to generational control political offices.
Although the historical debt is a heavy one, it is important notto overlook the ways that communities of color always haveworked to educate themselves. Between 1865 and 1877, AfricanAmericans mobilized to bring public education to the South forthe first time.
1865 to 1877 was the reconstruction era. African Americans were elected to high offices during this time with federal assistance. After the federal government pulled out of the South, the racist JIM CROW policies took hold and ruled for over 100 years or more to this day.
Those inequities initially were formed around race, class, and gen-der. Gradually, some of the inequities began to recede, but clearlythey persist in the realm of race. In the case of African Americans,education was initially forbidden during the period of enslave-ment. After emancipation we saw the development of freedmen’sschools whose purpose was the maintenance of a servant class.During the long period of legal apartheid, African Americansattended schools where they received cast-off textbooks andmaterials from White schools.
The inferior funding and school infrastructure formed the basis of the legal arguments in Brown v. Board of Education that "separate by equal" was inherently "separate and unequal." Before mass media, books were viewed as a form of power. The racist United States policy was to restrict access to the populations that the wealthy wanted to control.
The nation’s debt hit the $1 billion markin 1863 and the $1 trillion mark in 1981
1861 was the start of the Civil War. The civil war could be classified as a race war. Also an economic war. All Wars are Banker's wars. This reminds me of the first funding of Head Start. Head Start only received a small amount of federal budget funds in the 1960s and 1970s , while the Vietnam War budget received trillions.
His work with his wife and colleague Mamie formed the basis forthe landmark Brown v. Board of Education(1954) case that reversedlegal segregation in public schools and other public accommoda-tions.
There were many federal cases brought against school districts in the JIM CROW era. These cases used photographs to compare public schools attended by White Students to the public school building attended by black students. A picture tells a thousand words. In school districts across the country the White School were new and clean , while the black schools looked dangerously in need of building repairs. These photos were admitted as evidence of discrimination in the use of public school funds in federal court cases. These case culminated in the Brown v Board of Education case.