Sign-In
Cart
The Dream Long Deferred: The Landmark Struggle for Desegregation in Charlotte, North Carolina
Hardcover
General Racism & Ethnic StudiesRegional: SouthSocial Movements
ISBN13: 9781570036453
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Published: Oct 26 2006
Pages: 240
Weight: 1.06
Height: 0.82 Width: 6.36 Depth: 9.24
Language: English
A fifty-year history of one community's battles with race in public education
The Dream Long Deferred tells the fifty-year story of the landmark struggle for desegregation in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the present state of the city's public school system. Award-winning writer Frye Gaillard, who covered school integration for the Charlotte Observer, updates his earlier 1988 and 1999 editions of this work to examine the difficult circumstances of the present day.
When the struggle to desegregate Charlotte began in the 1950s, the city was much like many other New South cities. But unlike peer communities that would resist federal rulings, Charlotte chose to begin voluntary desegregation of its schools in 1957. Over the next decade it made consistent, if slow, progress toward greater integration.
The glacial pace of change frustrated Charlotte's black citizens, prompting them to file lawsuits in federal court to seek nothing less than complete integration. When the U.S. District Court in 1969, and subsequently the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971, upheld that demand in the landmark Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg decision, Charlotte became the national test case for busing. Though the transition was not always peaceful, within five years Charlotte was a model of successful integration. North Carolinians of all races joined in public and private initiatives to make desegregation work and garnered national recognition for their achievement. Based on the favorable results, a powerful consensus developed in Charlotte that desegregation was morally right and educational beneficial. But that opinion was not to last.
Charlotte's population grew rapidly in the 1990s, and many new arrivals were weary of the status of the public school system. In 1999 a group of white citizens reopened the case to push for a return to neighborhood schools. A federal judge sided with them, finding that the plans initiated in the 1971 ruling were both unnecessary and unconstitutional because they were race-based. Charlotte's journey had come full circle.
Today, Gaillard explains, Charlotte's schools are becoming segregated once more--this time along both economic and racial lines. A growing number of white students are either leaving the public school system for private institutions or converging on a few exceptional schools in affluent communities. This exodus from neighborhood schools has put the future of the city's public school system in jeopardy once more.
In this new edition of The Dream Long Deferred, Gaillard chronicles the span of Charlotte's five-decade struggle with race in education to remind us that the national dilemma of equal educational opportunity remains unsettled. Balanced in his treatment of all sides, Gaillard gives the issue a human face so that historians, educators, and ordinary citizens can better glean understanding from the triumph and tragedy of one American community.
Also in
Regional: South
Kingdom of Devils: A Tale of Murder in the Shadow of the American Revolution
Grandjean, Katherine
Hardcover
Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War
Fields-Black, Edda L.
Hardcover
They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South
Jones-Rogers, Stephanie E.
Paperback
The Legend of Wyatt Outlaw: From Reconstruction Through Black Lives Matter
Allen, Sylvester, Jr.
Boggs, Belle
Hardcover
When It's Darkness on the Delta: How America's Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land
Eubanks, W. Ralph
Hardcover
Partisans and Redcoats: The Southern Conflict That Turned the Tide of the American Revolution
Edgar, Walter B.
Paperback
Bubble in the Sun: The Florida Boom of the 1920s and How It Brought on the Great Depression
Knowlton, Christopher
Paperback
Wilmington's Lie (Winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize): The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy
Zucchino, David
Paperback
The Golden Age of Normandale: An Illustrated Remembrance of Montgomery's Legendary Shopping Center
Moseley, Willie G.
Paperback
The Last Castle: The Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation's Largest Home
Kiernan, Denise
Paperback
Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America
King, Gilbert
Paperback
The Lightning-Bug and the Lightning: Debunking the Myths of Mark Twain, in His Own Words
Dawidziak, Mark
Hardcover
South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
Perry, Imani
Paperback
Finding Sarah and Mary: Unraveling African American Genealogy from the Ground Up
Jones Royster, Jacqueline
Paperback
Kings Mountain: America's Most Forgotten Battle That Changed the Course of the American Revolution
Tucker, Phillip Thomas
Hardcover
Lost Raleigh: Exploring the Oak City's Architectural History
Dunn, Ian F. G.
Hanbury, Mary Ruffin
Paperback
Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera: An Insider's History of the Florida-Alabama Coast
Jackson, Harvey H., III
Paperback
The Road That Made America: A Modern Pilgrim's Journey on the Great Wagon Road
Dodson, James
Hardcover
A Portrait of Walt Disney World: 50 Years of the Most Magical Place on Earth
Kern, Kevin M.
O'Day, Tim
Vagnini, Steven
Hardcover
I Am Murdered: George Wythe, Thomas Jefferson, and the Killing That Shocked a New Nation
Chadwick, Bruce
Paperback
Digging Up Bones: When Truth Is Exhumed: When Truth Is Exhumed (Large Print Edition)
Radic, Tanya Covington
Paperback
Language and Life on Ocracoke: The Living History of the Brogue
Wolfram, Walt
Gaskill, Candy
Reaser, Jeffrey
Paperback
The Nature of Pain: Roots, Recovery, and Redemption Amid the Opioid Crisis
Sheffel, Mandi Fugate
Hardcover
Spooky Florida: Tales of Hauntings, Strange Happenings, and Other Local Lore
Schlosser, S. E.
Paperback
Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia
Covington, Dennis
Paperback
The Builders: Six Master Carpenters Who Shaped Louisiana's Antebellum Lafourche Country
Plater, David
Paperback
Gullah Days: Hilton Head Islanders Before the Bridge 1861-1956
Grant, Carolyn
Barnwell, Thomas C., Jr.
Campbell, Emory Shaw
Paperback
The Dark Side of the Smoky Mountains: A Travel Guide for Your Next Spooky Journey
Lance, Erika
Eerie Travels
Paperback
The Devil Is Here in These Hills: West Virginia's Coal Miners and Their Battle for Freedom
Green, James
Paperback
Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America
Taylor, Candacy
Paperback
Celebrating Southern Appalachian Food: Recipes & Stories from Mountain Kitchens
Pressley, Tipper
Casada, Jim
Paperback
Spooky Virginia: Tales of Hauntings, Strange Happenings, and Other Local Lore
Schlosser, S. E.
Paperback
Foxfire 12: Square Dancing, Crafts, Cherokee Traditions, Summer Camps, World War Veterans, Personalities
Foxfire Fund Inc
Paperback
Fairies of Northern Appalachia: A History of the Little People of the Mountains
Warburton, Andrew
Paperback
Café Lafitte in Exile: Queer New Orleans and the Story of America's Oldest Gay Bar
Perez, Frank
Palmquist, Jeffrey
Hardcover
Nashville's New Americans: Tracing the Journeys of Our Immigrant Neighbors
Sellmeyer, Sheri Lea
Paperback
Everything You Were Taught about the Civil War Is Wrong, Ask a Southerner!
Seabrook, Lochlainn
Paperback
The Price of Borrowed Coffee: The Eighty-Year Pursuit of Justice for Charlie Lee Price
Price, Richard
Paperback
South to America American Classics Edition: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
Perry, Imani
Paperback
We Just Keep Running the Line: Black Southern Women and the Poultry Processing Industry
Gray, Laguana
Hardcover
Spooky North Carolina: Tales of Hauntings, Strange Happenings, and Other Local Lore
Schlosser, S. E.
Paperback
Defending Dixie's Land: What Every American Should Know About The South and The Civil War
Bishop, Isaac C.
Hardcover
Backcountry Resistance: South Carolina's Militia and the Fight for American Independence
Borick, Carl P.
Hardcover
Nether Land: High School Temptation, Insurance Haze, Stolen Resolution, and Murder
Hinton, Kem
Paperback
This Fierce People: The Untold Story of America's Revolutionary War in the South
Crawford, Alan Pell
Paperback
The Empire State of the South: Georgia History in Documents and Essays
Meyer, Christopher C.
Paperback
Fourteenth Colony: The Forgotten Story of the Gulf South During America's Revolutionary Era
Bunn, Mike
Hardcover
Out of Virginia: Black Americans' Search for Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Liberia
Stinnett, Joseph P.
Paperback
Florida Lore: The Barefoot Mailman, Cowboy Bone Mizell, the Tallahassee Witch and Other Tales
Neile, Caren Schnur
Paperback
Freedom's Dominion (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize): A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power
Cowie, Jefferson
Paperback
Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion
Larson, Edward J.
Paperback
Loving Insects: John Abbot's Drawings and Natural History Collecting in the Atlantic World, 1760s-1840s
Tobin, Beth
Hardcover
The Tougaloo Nine: The Jackson Library Sit-In at the Crossroads of Civil War and Civil Rights
O'Brien, M. J.
Hardcover
A Stranger Among Saints: Stephen Hopkins, the Man Who Survived Jamestown and Saved Plymouth
Mack, Jonathan
Paperback
Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South
Silkenat, David
Hardcover
Inquisition for Blood: The Making of a Black Female Serial Killer in the Jim Crow South
Henley, Lauren Nicole
Hardcover
Suncoast Empire: Bertha Honore Palmer, Her Family, and the Rise of Sarasota, 1910-1982
Cassell, Frank a.
Paperback
Pine Needles: The Rise and Fall of a Gilded Age Southern Quail Hunting Estate
Rebertus, Robert
Hardcover
Arkansas/Arkansaw: How Bear Hunters, Hillbillies, and Good Ol' Boys Defined a State
Blevins, Brooks
Paperback
A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School
Page, Lisa Frazier
Lanier, Carlotta Walls
Paperback
Creepy Florida: Phantom Pirates, the Hog Island Witch, the DeMented Doctor at the Don Vicente and More
Muncy, Mark
Schultz, Kari Ann
Paperback
Mountain Ghost Stories and Curious Tales of Western North Carolina
Barnett, Janet
Russell, Randy
Paperback
Dixie Be Damned: 300 Years of Insurrection in the American South
Shirley, Neal
Stafford, Saralee
Paperback
Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement
Anderson, Devery S.
Paperback
Unc A to Z: What Every Tar Heel Needs to Know about the First State University
Moore, Cecelia
Graham, Nicholas
Hardcover
Power and Just Transitions: Struggles for a Post-Coal Future in an Appalachian Valley
Gaventa, John
Schwartzman, Gabe
Paperback
S Is for Southern: A Guide to the South, from Absinthe to Zydeco
Dibenedetto, David
Editors of Garden and Gun
Hardcover
A Place Like Mississippi: A Journey Through a Real and Imagined Literary Landscape
Eubanks, W. Ralph
Hardcover
Eating on a Mountain at the End of the World: How I Found Love, Humor, and Beauty in My Quest for Ethical Food
Vernon, Zackary
Paperback
Zora Neale Hurston on Florida Food: Recipes, Remedies & Simple Pleasures
Opie, Frederick Douglass
Paperback
Eerie Appalachia: Smiling Man Indrid Cold, the Jersey Devil, the Legend of Mothman and More
Muncy, Mark
Schultz, Kari Ann
Paperback
Cure: New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix 'em from the Award-Winning Bar
Bodenheimer, Neal
Timberlake, Emily
Hardcover