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

Murphy, Justin

ISBN 10: 1501761862 / ISBN 13: 9781501761867

Published by Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2022

About this Item

8vo, 296 pp., Signed by the author on the half-title page.

Seller Inventory # 122768

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Your Children Are Very Greatly in Danger: School Segregation in Rochester, New York
• Publisher: Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY
• Publication Date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1501761862
• ISBN 13: 9781501761867
• Binding: hardcover
• Illustrator: Illus. with photos
• Edition: 1st.
• Condition: Fine copy in fine dust jacket
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • African American

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Author

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