We’re joined by two White mothers who recently moved. Anna and Sarah have been part of the Integrated Schools community for some time and had the opportunity to really think about their values as they chose new cities, new neighborhoods, new houses, and new schools.
We kick off Season 7 with some big changes for the podcast! Val, a Black mom from North Carolina, joins Andrew to co-host this season. We discuss why she cares about school integration, and what we hope to accomplish through our multiracial discussions.
Mother, journalist, and author Courtney Martin’s new book, Learning in Public, is at once a deeply personal memoir of the “journey of a thousand moral miles” that led her to enroll her daughter in their neighborhood “failing” school, as well as a full-hearted endorsement of public schools as the foundation of our fragile democracy, in all of their nuance and complexity. She joins us to discuss the book, and integration more broadly, with one of the key characters in the book, Mrs. Minor, a Black teacher who left the public schools to start her own private preschool, and brings a healthy degree of skepticism of the value of desegregation.
In our season 6 finale, we’re looking back at the infamous “separate but equal” case – Plessy v Ferguson, and how we continue to live with many of the ramifications of that decision today. Attorney Paula Forbes joins us to discuss the importance of reckoning with our past and repairing in order to create the future we desire.
Greg and Carol, two Black parents from different parts of the county, share their experiences in mostly White schools. Through them, we can see how far we have to go to created truly integrated schools.