Civil Rights at the Schoolhouse Gate: Student Protest and the Struggle for Racial Reform
FAIN: FT-249280-16
Kathryn Anne Schumaker
University of Oklahoma, Norman (Norman, OK 73019-3003)
Archival research in Mississippi, Colorado, and Washington, DC on the struggle for constitutional rights by students during the 1960s and 1970s.
"Civil Rights at the Schoolhouse Gate: Student Protest and the Struggle for Racial Reform," examines how young African Americans participated in the emergence of a new regime of public school students' constitutional rights from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. In the midst of the Black Freedom Struggle, African American students sought reforms at school-- though at their own peril. Until 1969, the US Supreme Court had not recognized public school students as possessing any constitutional rights, putting students who protested at the risk of suspension or expulsion for their actions. Ultimately, student protest and the litigation initiated on students' behalf pushed the courts to recognize that students did have some rights, including due process. At the same time, the courts mainly protected the rights of students who were not disruptive.