By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

“I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” So proclaimed Alabama Gov. George Wallace more than a half-century ago. His proudly racist rhetoric was matched by heinous actions: Murders, lynchings and systemic violence, often endorsed or organized by state and local governments, were inflicted on African Americans and their allies struggling for civil rights. Despite that, those fighting for equality prevailed. Among the successes were the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, affirmative action and court-ordered integration of schools. But with this week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision supporting Michigan’s ban against affirmative action in state university admissions, and with the increasing resegregation of schools, it seems like Wallace’s dream of “segregation forever” may be alive and all too well.

Nikole Hannah-Jones is an investigative journalist with the nonprofit news organization ProPublica, which has just published her yearlong, 9,000-word piece on the resegregation of public schools in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. This remarkable report, “Segregation Now,” notes that “In Tuscaloosa today, nearly one in three black students attends a school that looks as if Brown v. Board of Education never happened.” The Brown decision, issued in May of 1954, covered several pending court cases (all organized by the NAACP) challenging school segregation. U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren authored the unanimous decision, writing, “We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

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