Desegregating Chicago's Public Schools ─ Policy Implementation, Politics, and Protest, 1965-1985

With the dual impetus of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Chicago, like so many other cities, began the process of desegregating its public school system. What resulted was a unique study in the implementation and transformation of public policy, as the city dealt with and pushed back against directives and lawsuits from both the state and federal governments. In this book, Dionne Danns provides the story of how public policy on this historic topic was formed by stakeholders at all levels, from superintendents to parents to state and federal officials, and how politics and stakeholder perceptions and protests determined outcomes for the school system.

Dionne Danns is Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies and Adjunct in African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, USA. She is the author of Something Better for Our Children: Black Organizing in Chicago Public Schools, 1963-1971.