A Troubled Dream

The Promise and Failure of School Desegregation in Louisiana

Carl L. Bankston, Stephen J. Caldas, Carl L Bankston, Carl Bankston III, Carl L. Bankston, III

• Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN:
  9780826513892
  9780826513885
• eBook ISBN:
  9780826591487
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia nordamericana

Winner, Louisiana Literary Award 2003

Fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, the United States still has a long way to go to attain true integration of our educational system.

Using extensive interviews and a wealth of statistical information, Bankston and Caldas examine the failed desegregation efforts in Louisiana as a case study to show how desegregation has followed the same unsuccessful pattern across the United States. Strong supporters of the dream of integration, Bankston and Caldas show that the practical difficulty with desegregation is that academic environments are created by all the students in a school from the backgrounds that all the students bring with them. Unfortunately, the disadvantages that minority children have to overcome affect schools more than schools can help remedy these disadvantages.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Problem of Writing about Race
• Chapter 1. Louisiana’s Schools Prior to Desegregation
• Chapter 2. The Struggle to Desegregate the Schools
• Chapter 3. New Orleans
• Chapter 4. East Baton Rouge
• Chapter 5. School Desegregation and White Flight in Lafayette Parish
• Chapter 6. Louisiana and the Dilemma of Desegregation
• Chapter 7. The Academic Consequences of Desegregation and Resegregation
• Chapter 8. Recommendations
• Appendix A. Single-Parent Families and Educational Environment
• Appendix B. A Multilevel Statistical Examination of the Harm and Benefit Thesis
• Notes
• Index