Skip to main content

Case Studies in this Unit

The history of race in the United States is long and precedes European contact on what we now call the Atlantic seaboard. However, this history entered another phase, one we continue to reckon with, when enslaved Africans arrived in North America. U.S. society is still living with the legacy of a racial caste system; from slavery to Jim Crow to the persistence of racial inequality and discrimination today. The issue of school desegregation highlights this history and continues to be an important part of the fight for racial justice and educational equity today.