Is education now on "equal terms," as called for in the landmark 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court Decision ending school segregation? 

In Spring 2004, students in Jorge Lopez's "Youth and Justice" course at Roosevelt High School in East Los Angeles used the Facing History approach and resources to explore critical questions like this one, alternating between study of touch periods in American history and dialogue about tough problems in their own school community today.

Roosevelt High--the second largest secondary school in the United States--is now nearly 99% Latino, but the school was actually much more diverse years ago, before Brown brought an official end to school segregation.

Teacher Jorge Lopez collaborated with Facing History and Ourselves as well as UCLA's Institute for Democracy and Education to craft a course focused on the struggle for desegregation and the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education.

Working closely with Facing History's regional and national staff, Lopez drew on Facing History curricular materials as well as its teaching approaches, engaging students in rigorous analysis of history, law, and democracy, as well as guided discussion of relevant contemporary events.

Students read, among other things, selections from one of Facing History's resource books, Race and Membership in American History: The Eugenics Movement, which explores the roots of racism n the United States and how this past has affected educational policy in the United States.

Students strongly identified with a particular passage in which Malcolm X reflected on a conversation he once had with a teacher who had discouraged him aspiring to be a lawyer, arguing that this goal was unrealistic for an African-American.

High school students acknowledged that similar prejudices about intelligence and ability constrain them and their peers even today. 

They studied struggles for educational equity from the Jim Crow era to the present, discussed student movements for making change, and assessed educational policies like tracking.

As a culminating project, students traveled to New York City to present their essays at a NYU conference marking the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board decision.

Speaking at the NYU conference was a crucial and necessary act by the students to reclaim the past and also the struggle for educational equity and justice in America.

The students brought a different perspective to Brown v. Board that historically has often been ignored--the voice of the Chicano student for educational justice.

...East L.A. students built a bridge between the East and West coast schools and brought to life the similarities and relationships that both Latino and Black American students undergo in America, today and in the past.