Your Children Are Very Greatly in Danger: School Segregation in Rochester, New York

In Your Children Are Very Greatly in Danger, the veteran journalist Justin Murphy argues that Rochester's educational disparities stem from historical and ongoing racial segregation. Education reform alone cannot resolve racial inequity; cities such as Rochester must first dismantle segregation.

Through interviews and documents, Murphy shows how discriminatory policies and personal prejudice shaped the region's segregated educational system. Alongside this troubling history, he highlights the fight for integration, from Frederick Douglass's advocacy in the 1850s to student activism inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement in the 2010s.

Murphy illustrates how numerous failed efforts to uphold the promise of Brown v. Board of Education underline that desegregation and integration remain the best opportunities to improve educational and economic outcomes for children of color. In Rochester, that opportunity has been lost, leading to persistently poor academic results.

Your Children Are Very Greatly in Danger offers both historical and contemporary analysis, showing how northern cities must confront their past to build a more equitable future.

Justin Murphy is a journalist and the research and communications coordinator at Our Local History.