Sixth Grade Center Integration Case Study

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court landmark decision Brown v. Board of Education found that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Throughout the United States, communities had varying reactions to school desegregation running the gamut from acceptance to resistance. After failing to desegregate on their own, the schools in Clark County School District in Las Vegas, Nevada were compelled by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to act. As a result, they created the Sixth-Grade Center Plan of Integration to desegregate the elementary schools within the district. The plan required children to be bussed to the Westside (the black community) for one year during sixth grade. All other years, the children from the black community were bussed to the white schools. To determine the community perceptions of the school desegregation efforts in Las Vegas data including interview transcripts from local activists, newspaper articles and audio interviews were reviewed.
It appears that the majority white population of Las Vegas did not welcome school desegregation. They fought against various proposed integration plans for years and the courts finally had to intervene and hand down a mandate demanding action from
Eisenberg (2007) and Trudell (2006) both indicate that the Sixth-Grade Centers integration plan ultimately wound up being successful for their families, but still held that the time spent on the bus was unfair to black students. Trudell (2006) claimed that she may be in the minority, but she did feel the plan was successful for her son (p. 44). Despite all the conflict, the mandatory desegregation for these schools was a way for white students and black students to see each other as human beings, and to learn that they have more in common than they could have