Brick Walls
Subtitle: Reflections on Race in a Southern School District
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Published: August 31, 2006
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 164
ISBN-13: 9781570036385
Subjects: Black studies; Education; Political Ideologies - Nationalism; Education / Teaching; Philosophy & Social Aspects; Central Southern states; United States - State & Local - South; Administration - General; Discrimination & Racism; History; 20th century; African American children; Florence; School integration; South Carolina
Description: "In 1987, when veteran school administrator Thomas E. Truitt took the post of district superintendent in Florence, South Carolina, he assumed leadership of a public school system in denial of its racial disharmony. More than three decades after Brown v. Board of Education, Florence District One had never accomplished an integration plan that met federal approval; rather the district had skirted the intent of the federal mandate by employing "freedom of choice" and traditional attendance zones. In the 1990s a single issue - the need to replace an aging, predominantly black elementary school - brought to the fore the local population's anguished attitudes about race and education.

Brick Walls recounts in wrenching detail how legacies of discrimination and injustice combined to divide a community along racial lines."--Jacket.