Stepping over the Color Line
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African-American Students in White Suburban Schools
Amy Stuart Wells and Robert L. Crain
Stepping over the Color Line intertwines data on student achievement and racial isolation with stories of the people who participated in the St. Louis program. The authors set these individuals within a broad historical and social context and demonstrate how important linkages between the past and present help explain why efforts to overcome racial inequality—in St. Louis and in the larger society—are so difficult.
"The authors do a superb job of explaining how this innovative program came about, placing it in a broad context that takes it beyond its immediate and local implications. The book is at times heartbreaking and at times uplifting."—Richard Zweigenhaft, co-author of Blacks in the White Establishment? A Study of Race and Class in America
"The authors do a superb job of explaining how this innovative program came about, placing it in a broad context that takes it beyond its immediate and local implications. The book is at times heartbreaking and at times uplifting."—Richard Zweigenhaft
"School desegregation is unfashionable these days, but no one has come close to proposing a better solution to the problems of racial separation, social isolation (of whites as well as blacks), and educational inequality that are endemic to American schools. Wells and Crain have the courage to insist that old-fashioned ideals are still of value, the integrity to show how those ideals get tarnished by reality, and the analytic skills to distinguish desegregative success from failure and to explain them both. This is a wise and helpful book in an arena desperately in need of both wisdom and help."—Jennifer L. Hochschild
"[A book] with a high quotient of objectivity that should engage those active, as professionals or protesters, in desegregation cases."—Gilbert Taylor, Booklist
"This description of the accomplishments of one school desegregation plan provides insights into much broader dialogue on the role of race in America."—Resources in Education
"Comprehensive and often insightful analysis."--Andre A. Jackson, Washington Post
Publication Date: October 11, 1999