50 years later, Brown remains unfulfilled
Could you imagine the excitement of black communities across America on May 17, 1954, the day the Supreme Court handed down the Brown decision and declared the doctrine of "separate but equal" unconstitutional?Imagine the euphoria of black parents across the country who dreamed of something better for their children and insisted that education was the best way to improve their circumstances.Imagine their joy as they realized that their children would no longer have to attend dilapidated schools and read from second and third hand books.Imagine the excitement of those whose lives had been defined by the humiliating insistence that they were less than, and having this view structured in the very order of things.Imagine their joy at the possibility that the Court's decision constituted a death sentence to Jim and Jane Crow.But we know what followed.