A girl stands at the door
Subtitle: the generation of young women who desegregated America's schools
By: Rachel Devlin
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 342
ISBN-13: 9781541697331
Copyright date: 2018
Subjects: Educational equalization; Segregation in education; School integration; Civil rights movements; Discrimination in education; African American girls; Education; History
Description: "A new history of school desegregation in America, revealing how girls and women led the fight for interracial education The struggle to desegregate America's schools was a grassroots movement, and young women were its vanguard. In the late 1940s, parents began to file desegregation lawsuits with their daughters, forcing Thurgood Marshall and other civil rights lawyers to take up the issue and bring it to the Supreme Court. After the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, girls far outnumbered boys in volunteering to desegregate formerly all-white schools. In A Girl Stands at the Door, historian Rachel Devlin tells the remarkable stories of these desegregation pioneers. She also explains why black girls were seen, and saw themselves, as responsible for the difficult work of reaching across the color line in public schools. Highlighting the extraordinary bravery of young black women, this bold revisionist account illuminates today's ongoing struggles for equality"--Amazon.com.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Roots of change: Lucile Blueford's long crusade; title: "This lone negro girl": Ada Lois Spiuel, desegregation champion; title: Girls on the front line: grassroots challenges in the late 1940s; title: Laying the groundwork: Esther Brown and the struggle in South Park, Kansas; title: "Hearts and minds": the road to Brown v. Board of Education; title: "Take care of my baby": the isolation of the first "firsts"; title: "We raised our hands and said 'yes we will go'": desegregating schools in the mid-1960s.