People For President Svante Myrick discusses the lasting legacy of Brown v. Board of Education on segregation in public schools and racial justice.
Public Confederate monuments don’t just remind Black Americans of a painful history, they send a message that the powers that be don’t notice or care about that impact. And most were created decades after the Civil War — more to push back against Black Americans’ progress than to commemorate any war “hero.”
So when a Virginia school district voted this month to restore the names of Lee and other Confederates to two schools, it hurt.
That it happened just days before the 70th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education hurt even more. So did new findings that there is more de facto school segregation in America today than there has been for years, due to factors including “white flight” from urban districts.