Learning Objective for The Challenge of Liberal Reform: School Desegregation, North and South

This unit introduces a critical yet underappreciated moment in the history of the civil rights movement, when national consensus over the future of school desegregation began to break down. Using limited resources, you will learn about the different challenges northern and southern schools faced in desegregating, the growing rift between liberal supporters of school desegregation, and some of the legal issues involved in moving the desegregation fight to school districts outside of the South. You will better understand some of the unresolved issues from civil rights struggles of the 1960s and how it was that despite unprecedented gains in breaking down segregated patterns of schooling in the rural South, separate and unequal public education persisted in the United States for decades to come.