Young, Gifted and Black: On the Experience of Black Students in CMS

By Malin Curry

Most people know about the 1954 Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education. A decision that ruled educational facilities exclusively for whites and Blacks, or “separate but equal spaces,” were inherently unequal. They know that 12 Black families in Topeka, Kansas got together to sue the Board of Education there. That their efforts, buoyed by the support of local NAACP chapters and other local Black coalitions ultimately helped them achieve their goal. They know that the Supreme Court sided with people of color everywhere when they made their ruling, leading to the “immediate” desegregation of the school system across the United States. Most people know this.

What most people don’t know, or rather conveniently forget, is that school desegregation didn’t just happen after that ruling. It took a lot of tries, many iterations and failed attempts by individual states to fully desegregate, and reintegrate. These state attempts collectively illustrated a resigned demurral of the Black child. “You can force us to include them, but that doesn’t mean we have to fully buy in.” And nowhere is this thinking more prevalent than in Charlotte Mecklenburg’s School System.

Let’s begin with a scenario.