This week, the death of Jefferson Thomas, one of the nine young black men and women who made history by becoming the first students to integrate a southern public school after Brown v. Board of Education, is a stark reminder of how far school reformers and civil rights activists of an earlier generation had to go in order to provide equal opportunity within American public education. At the same time, his life (and those of fellow Little Rock Central High School students Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Minnijean Brown, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Thelma Mothershed, and Melba Beals) is a reminder of why we must still go further to improve the quality of education for our poorest and minority kids. The fact that one out of every two black male eighth-graders will drop out into poverty and prison — six decades after the Little Rock Nine — is both an indictment of the black community (for failing to agitate for real systemic school reform) and defenders of traditional public education (who oppose all efforts at reform). And integration is merely a false promise: Poor white and black students attending shoddy schools merely leads to more dropouts.
Watch this excerpt from the Renaud Brothers’ 2007 documentary, Little Rock Central: 50 Years Later, and think about what next steps we must take to assure that every child has an equal opportunity to gain a high-quality education — and write their own stories.
