The National Coalition for School Diversity serves as the hub of the school integration movement. While their annual conference was postponed due to COVID, the keynote panel was held virtually. A conversation conceived in honor of Integrated Schools founder and former podcast co-host, Courtney, it offers a chance to better understand the history of desegregation so that we might better conceive of how to move forward. A chance to know better, so that we might do better.
Through a conversation facilitated by journalist Dani McClain, Dr. Vanessa Siddle-Walker tells the story of the excellent, robust, and holistic Black schools and educators that our country consciously eliminated in its desegregation efforts. While Dr. Elizabeth McRae recounts the steady work of White supremacist educational politics, most often led by White women, to ensure that Black educational excellence was eroded and replaced by White supremacist policies and pedagogy. Not only did real integration never happen, but the costs of its failure were enormous and last to today.
Courtney was on the NCSD steering committee, and this panel was conceived in her honor. Author Courtney Martin kicks off the conversation by conjuring the memory of Courtney Mykytyn, and Andrew closes things out with a tribute to Courtney and the importance of this work, in this moment.
It’s an important conversation, and we are deeply grateful to everyone involved for allowing us to share it.
LINKS:
- Elizabeth McRea – Mother’s of Massive Resistance
- Vanessa Siddle-Walker – Their Highest Potential, The Lost Education of Horace Tate
- Dani McClain – We Live for the We
- Courtney Martin – The New Better Off
- The National Coalition for School Diversity
- Video of the full keynote is available here.
- Eula Biss – White Debt
- The NEA
- The Fort Pillow Massacre
- The United Daughters of the Confederacy
- Green v County Board of New Kent County
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The Integrated Schools Podcast was created by Courtney Mykytyn and Andrew Lefkowits.
This episode was produced, edited, and mixed by Andrew Lefkowits.
Music by Kevin Casey.
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