President Biden on Friday celebrated the 70th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision that ended segregation in public schools.
“Seventy years ago, when the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, a prayer has been answered in the long struggle for freedom,” Biden said, speaking from the National Museum of African American History. and Culture in Washington, DC
He reflected on Thursday’s meeting with members of the Little Rock Nine and how what they faced in 1957 was not that long ago, pointing out that there is still room for progress.
“We have a whole group of people trying to rewrite history, trying to erase history,” Biden said.
As of 2021, at least 18 states have imposed bans or restrictions on teaching race and gender topics, according to a report for Education Week.
During the 2022-23 school year, 153 districts in 33 states banned books, according to a PEN America report, many of which were written by authors of color and address topics such as race and racism.
The Biden-Harris administration this week announced new steps to achieve educational equity, including investing $20 million in new awards for school districts in Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina and Texas to establish magnet programs .
The administration is also launching an interagency process to preserve African American history.
“The Brown decision proves a simple idea: We learn best when we learn together,” Biden said.
After he spoke, members of the Little Rock Nine addressed the crowd with Sheryl Ralph Lee.
They shared what it was like to attend school, escorted by the U.S. National Guard, as crowds of white protesters shouted epithets and hung effigies as they passed by.
“They intended to hurt us,” Elizabeth Eckford said.
Racism, Minnijean Brown Trickey added, is designed to hurt the marginalized. But because they persevered, she said, things were able to change.
“Children can make presidents act,” Brown Trickey said. “In the end, it was our persistence that made it possible for everyone to advocate on our behalf.”
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