Chapter 3: Burning Brown to the Ground
​
  1. Of the many examples provided demonstrating the lengths to which white lawmakers were willing to go in order to hamper the proliferation of schools for black students, Prince Edward County in Virginia was the most egregious. Upon implementing the Gray Plan, Senator Gray said, "I guess we won the Civil War." What do you think he means by this? What might this indicate about the way some white lawmakers interpreted the purpose and outcomes of the Civil War? How does this differ from your own understanding?
  2. On page 85, it reads, "The most popular method of foot-dragging was the school board's freedom-of-choice plan, which ensured that white parents could move their children away from any school 'threatened' with desegregation. The result was that by 1969, Prince Edward County Schools were now 98 percent black, and, once again, starved of resources." How are these policies enabled by local or state control? How does this approach map to what you know of "school choice" in public schools today or even in relation to your own experience as a student, educator, or administrator?
  3. The NAACP was the target of numerous attempts to foil, undermine, criminalize, or penalize efforts at representing black parents and their children's right to a quality education. How did state legislative action and federal legislative action help or hinder the NAACP’s efforts?
  4. In an earlier chapter, Dr. Anderson writes, "The bottom line was that black economic independence was anathema to a power structure that depended on cheap, exploitable, rightless labor and required black subordination." How is this notion recognized and/or undermined by the white power structure after the Russians launched Sputnik into space?

For the icebreaker, I think we can ask folks to identify the type of school they went to for most of their K–12 education (public schools/private/parochial/religious/charter) as they walk in. Perhaps have folks use a colored dot sticker to place on their name tag coordinated with the different types of schools. We can ask that they find a partner with a different experience than their own, and ask two questions (can be different, this is just what I came up with):
  1. How did your school enable or prevent integration? Your answer can be within the context of race, but if that’s not applicable (if your school and/or district were overwhelmingly racially homogenous), you can respond in terms of class (or some other demographic category).
  2. At what point did you recognize how you or others were being treated? Do you have a specific moment in mind?