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Reprinted with permission of the
Meriden Record-Journal, April 8,
2006 By Jennifer Manes, Record-Journal staff WALLINGFORD — The Coalition for Unity sponsored a panel discussion with Sheehan High School’s Human Relations Club Friday morning designed to educate students about the history of desegregation in the nation’s school systems. “We hope you could really see and understand what it was like and see what it’s like to suffer,” Coalition Chairman Robbie Robinson told more than 100 students. “We hope in some way what we’re doing is a help to you.” Several students and coalition members joined Mayor William W. Dickinson Jr. and School Superintendent Kenneth V. Henrici on stage to recount the historic moments that led to the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, overturning a previous court ruling that found Louisiana’s “separate but equal” law constitutional. Nearly 200 plaintiffs from five states —Delaware, Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia and Washington, D.C. — brought the case to the Supreme Court in 1951. The Court’s unanimous opinion found separate schools “inherently unequal.” Robinson first presented this program to Sheehan students in 2004 on the 50th anniversary of the decision. Robinson said he hopes to begin offering it annually and extending it to Lyman Hall High School. Even though schools have been desegregated for more than 50 years, students Kemeya Spence and Shaterra Clark said the school system should continue educating students about key historical moments leading to such dramatic educational and social reforms. “I think it’s important that they learn the differences and that they learn how to accept different people and the struggles they’ve gone through,” said Spence, who along with Clark, drives to Sheehan from New Haven five days a week as part of a regional cooperative program. In 1996, the Connecticut Supreme Court ordered the state to take measures to end de facto segregation, paving the way for such inter-district programs. “Like anything else, you learn from history,” Henrici said. “And if you want to move forward, you need to examine the past. The clear message here is (segregation) creates a message of inferiority. And I think that really rung true with the students today.” (203) 317-2230 |
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