Making Education a Civil Right

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Guaranteeing the right to a highquality education for all citizens has been a historic struggle. Just as it has been in most struggles for civil rights, the NAACP has been a leading force on the education battlefield, from Charles Hamilton Houston's efforts in the 1930s and '40s as an NAACP attorney to desegregate state colleges and universities, to Thurgood Marshall's role as the lead attorney in the landmark 1954 Brown v Board of Education case. Nearly 50 years after the Brown decision, however, states and communities across the nation are still plagued by clear racial disparities in their educational systems.

Fueled by these disturbing inequities and an expanding education …