From the ACLU, this is at Liberty.

I'm Emerson Sykes, a staff attorney here at the ACLU and your host.

May 17th marks the 65th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, where the Supreme Court

decided that state laws enforcing segregation in public schools were unconstitutional.

In the wake of the decision, schools across the country were integrated through a variety

of means, including controversial busing programs that caused backlash in communities throughout the United States. Despite six and a half decades of means, including controversial busing programs that cause backlash in communities throughout

the United States. Despite six and a half decades of integration in fits and starts, today,

segregation in public schools is worse than ever in some places. Why is school desegregation so

important? And why is it such a hard problem to solve? To help with these questions, our guest today is Dr. Ansley Erickson,

an associate professor of history and education at Columbia University's Teachers College.

She's the author of Making the Unequal Metropolis, School Desegregation, and its limits.

She's also a former New York City school teacher.

We'll talk about the legacy of Brown versus Board

of Education and the current state of school segregation, desegregation, and resegregation in America.

Professor Erickson, thanks very much for joining us in the studio. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you.

So Brown versus Board was decided 65 years ago, and one might have anticipated that school segregation

would have been solved by now, but of course it hasn't, and one might have anticipated that school segregation would have been

solved by now, but of course it hasn't. And in many cases, it's getting worse. How do you evaluate

the legacy of Brown and where we stand today? Just a small question to start. Exactly.

So thinking about 65 years beyond Brown, what we might notice is that the tools that we were using to attack segregation have always been smaller than the tools that we use to build it.

So it's true that busing for many people, busing for school desegregation, for example, felt like a

massive intervention in what they thought their relationship was between where they lived,

...