See Connecticut Students Celebrating Integration in 1958
Below is a photo I found on Reddit that appears to be a white and black student in Stratford, CT in 1958, celebrating their newly racially integrated school. In 1954, the Supreme Court outlawed segregation in public schools in response to the landmark lawsuit known as Brown v. the Board of Education.
Over 60 years later, the debate rages as to whether school systems are still segregated. In February of 2020, the Economic Policy Institute published an article stating that schools are largely still segregated by race and ethnicity. The article went onto say that this results in a widened performance gap between black and white students.
2020 has been an eye opening year for me to see how far we really are from racial, justice, equality and harmony. While we can look into our lives and in popular culture and see all races, religions and cultures represented somewhere, we've also seen division grow wider in every realm of society.
The silver lining is in the discussion and the progress we have made, the discussion is happening because it has to. Those two young ladies in that photo smiling at one another were part of that fragile beginning that led us to a place where a young white woman and young black woman sharing lunch is not an oddity to be gawked at or misunderstood, but a meal between friends.
We take two steps forward and one back all the time in America, but the math always works in the favor of progress.
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