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African American Education during and after Segregation Essays

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Introduction
African American Education During and After Segregation
Education has always been valued in the African American community. During slavery freed slaves and those held captive, organized to educate themselves. After emancipation the value of education became even more important to ex-slaves, as it was their emblem of freedom and a means to full participation in American Society (Newby & Tyack, 1971). During this time many schools for African Americans were both founded and maintained by African Americans. African Americans continued to provide education throughout their own communities well into the 1930’s (Green, McIntosh, Cook-Morales, & Robinson-Zanartu, 2005). The atmosphere of these schools resembled a family. The …show more content…

What the Brown decision provided was a means to challenge the meaning of, “separate but equal”, as it applied to public schooling opportunities for students with disabilities (Blanchett, Mumford, & Beachum, 2005). Before and after Brown, students with disabilities were not necessarily educated in public schools as there were no laws that mandated this. For the most part disabled students were educated in facilities that were separate from the “regular” school setting.
Furthermore, advocates of special education used the Brown decision to initiate challenges to the existing segregated educational system in the form of well-known court cases. The rulings from these cases declared that it was unconstitutional to have separate schools for students with disabilities. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 was the first major federal effort to subsidize direct services to selected populations in public elementary and secondary schools, and it remains the primary vehicle for federal support of public schools today (Martin, Martin & Termin, 1996).

The Education for All Handicapped Children Act, (1975), The Education for All Handicapped Children Act, now known as the Individuals with

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