Integrated Schools is asking you to give us $19.54 this month. (Or $195.40, or $19.54/month, or $1954.00 – you get the idea).
Why now, and why $19.54? Because May 17 is the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision that declared racial segregation in education unconstitutional. (It’s also our late founder Courtney Mykytyn’s birthday – a bit more about that later this week.) In May, 1954, nine justices agreed: separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Schools funded by public dollars must serve all children together.
Thurgood Marshall — who would become the first Black Supreme Court Justice thirteen years later — had argued the case for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Oliver Brown had filed the lawsuit after his daughter Linda was refused enrollment at the White school blocks from their home in Topeka, Kansas, and forced instead to ride a bus twenty-one city blocks to a Black school. The case was not just Oliver Brown’s. It was the culmination of a well-coordinated legal battle, led by Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and made possible by the determined and courageous commitment of Black families across four states — Kansas, South Carolina, Delaware, Virginia — and the District of Columbia.
The Brown v. Board decision was unanimous. It declared, in no uncertain terms, that the “separate but equal” doctrine established in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case was dead.
At the time, Brown v. Board generated a fierce backlash. Defiance of the ruling occurred in communities across the country. In the South, states closed public schools rather than integrate them. (Sound familiar?) White families formed private “segregation academies” funded in part by public vouchers; seven Southern states ran formal programs to pay White students to leave integrated schools and take their public dollars with them. (Ring any bells?) The government that had promised equal protection looked away. (Hmm… looking at you, Justice Roberts!) In Northern and Western communities, resistance took the form of new housing discrimination, redrawn school districts, and nice White parents throwing bottles (and worse) at school buses.
But the Brown decision also changed lives. In his 2019 book, Children of the Dream, economist Dr. Rucker Johnson draws on longitudinal studies going back to the 1960s to show that students who attended integrated and well-funded schools as a result of the Brown ruling were more successful in life than those who did not. Moreover, Johnson’s work demonstrates that this held true for children of all races. In spite of White resistance, Brown v. Board showed us what is possible. (Our podcast episode, Rucker Johnson and the Grandchildren of Desegregation, is worth revisiting!)
Today, the legacy of Brown v. Board hangs in the balance. Since the peak of school integration in 198?, our public schools across the country have been resegregating. Nearly 1 in 3 students attend a segregated school today. Voucher programs that trace their roots directly to the post-Brown White flight movement are now law in 33 states and counting – laws in many cases passed by state legislatures over opposition from the majority of voters. Nearly 50% of American students live in a state with access to public funds for private education, and the federal government is preparing to launch a national voucher program in January 2027.
The ghost of Plessy v. Ferguson lingers in the dark corners of our body politic, its ‘separate but equal’ doctrine rebranded as ‘school choice’. The backlash of 1954 is now part of a frightening political movement that openly threatens not just our public schools but our democracy itself.
But we are not powerless – far from it. Your $19.54 gift enables Integrated Schools to help more people connect the dots: between 1954 and today, between the choices they make for their child and the society our children inherit. Every gift of $19.54 connects another family with this movement. (We’ll tell you more about how we do this later this week!)
Despite everything, people (including majorities of White people) still want public schools. We want to find our strength in our diversity, even when we’re not sure how to do that. Your contribution to Integrated Schools gives people the words, the tools, the support to test their values against messy reality. To be the change. To find our power not in fearful isolation but in beloved community.
That’s why we’re asking you to give Integrated Schools $19.54 today – and why, in recognition of the debt we owe to the people and communities behind Brown, we will split the contributions we receive from this campaign with the Thurgood Marshall Foundation. Founded by his family, the foundation preserves the legacy of Justice Thurgood Marshall, shares his story through history and education, and supports the next generation of leaders committed to advancing justice and equality.
Every May, we mark the anniversary of Brown v. Board – not with nostalgia or as history safely seen in the rearview mirror – but as a living obligation to both past and future. Because whether Brown v. Board proves an enduring historic turning point or becomes merely a historical footnote depends on what WE do now, in 2026 and beyond.
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