Referred to by many legal scholars as the "case of the century", Brown helped launch the civil rights movement that challenged America's race relations and social structure over the following decades. The legal precedent set in this groundbreaking case still serves as model for human rights activism throughout the world today.

But a half-century later, scholars and community leaders are still struggling to ensure that equal educational opportunities are indeed offered to all citizens. This essential study will address the most pressing questions about race and ethnicity in America…then and now.

This program examines the unique legal strategies employed by the NAACP and the Legal Defense Fund, Inc., to combat school segregation in the courts, uncover the split public sentiment that fueled the social structure of the "Jim Crow" era, address the successes and failures in the implementation of desegregation, and most importantly, analyze the role of diversity and multicultural education in America today.

Community Outreach: Asking the important questions:
An integral part of the program strategy is to extend the reach of the project into the community,promoting public dialogue by raising critical questions:

• What is the role of race in education?
• Why do discrepancies in achievement remain between whites and non-whites educated in public-school settings?
• What is the value of diversity in education?
• Is affirmative action still appropriate and/or necessary in today's society?
• How are economic justice and civil rights linked?

Working in collaboration with public television stations and educational, religious and social organizations nationwide, we have developed the resources and incentives necessary to plan screening events encouraging dialogue and community action throughout the country.


Our Outreach Initiatives Include:

• Curriculum Development
  We work hand in hand with national partners to identify, create and distribute curriculum compliant study guides, lesson plans, and teachers' instructions on how to incorporate With All Deliberate Speed into high school and college classrooms. These materials will be available on the program website for easy access.

• Community Engagement: Dialogues with Diversity
  Special film screenings, accompanied by facilitated community forums, accompany the broadcast of With All Deliberate Speed. We are working with our partners at public television stations and cultural organizations throughout the country to plan these events. We hope to foster a national public debate about race and ethnicity centered around the broadcast.

• Website Creation: Bridging the Digital Divide
  Our content-rich, companion website brings in-depth information and a wealth of content to a multi-generational, technology savvy audience. With outlines of the first-hand experiences of those directly involved in the Brown case, archival imagery, sound and narrative material, and extensive links to other existing resources, http://www.brownvboard.info/ provides an indispensable resource for students, teachers, and public television audiences who want to extend their experience beyond the broadcast.

Participating Scholars

• Julian Bond - Chair, NAACP; Professor of History, University of Virginia
• Jack Greenberg - Brown attorney, NAACP Legal Defense Fund; Columbia University Law School
• Gary Orfield - Professor of Education and Social Policy; Co-founder, Civil Rights Project, Harvard University
• Hon. Robert Carter - Brown attorney, NAACP Legal Defense Fund
• Mark V. Tushnet - Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University
• Leland Ware - L.L. Redding Chair for the Study of Law and Public Policy, University of Delaware
• James Patterson - Ford Foundation Professor of History emeritus, Brown University
• Genna Rae McNeil - University of North Carolina, Charles Houston Biographer
• Bradley Skelcher - Professor of History, Delaware State University
• Beverly Daniel Tatum - President, Spelman College
• Jonathan Kozol - Author, "Savage Inequalities", "Amazing Grace"
• James Oliver Horton - Benjamin Banneker Professor of American Studies and History, George Washington University