Kappan authors on desegregation 

The Kappan archive offers a window into history as it happens, a fact that is especially clear when it comes to the issue of segregation. In our pages, educators and scholars have debated whether schools should desegregate, how desegregation laws should be enforced, and what actions are appropriate in furthering the cause of equality. For example, in the years before the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, Kappan published a number of articles debating whether Black and White students should be integrated or remain in separate schools. Most authors held that the doctrine of separate but equal was clearly a failure, as the NAACP’s Leslie Perry argued in his April 1949 article, “Pattern of discrimination in education,” in which he wrote of Black Americans being beaten for trying to start a school, White retaliation against public officials who supported equal funding for Black schools, and the poor facilities provided for Black children. 

In the September 1949 issue, however, N. Conger (“The South is making progress”) disputed Perry’s account: