School Sagas: Desegregation Then and Now

FAIN: GA-275986-20

HARK (Shreveport, LA 71149-9274)
Rae Phillips (Project Director: May 2020 to present)

Hiring of two consultants to collect oral histories to mark the 50th anniversary of large-scale school desegregation in the Arkansas-Louisiana-Texas region.

The School Sagas project highlights the 50th anniversary of large-scale school desegregation in the Ark-La-Tex (Arkansas-Louisiana-Texas) region. Administrators maintained a dual system for 15 years after the “with all deliberate speed” language of the Supreme Court’s Brown II and 10 years after New Orleans’s Ruby Bridges was the first to desegregate an elementary school in the South. We will use oral histories and scholar commentaries to (a) help audiences consider the powerful role of rhetoric in shaping socio-political reality and (b) develop a framework for documenting similar stories on a national level. For example, we will explore how and why the terms “desegregation” and “integration” differ and to what extent these terms were used (perhaps inadvertently) to deny or affirm the lived experience of individuals. Our completed project will include radio and film documentaries, a curated website, traveling exhibit, and companion curriculum.