In an opinion piece published in The Tennessean in March, Ansley T. Erickson, Assistant Professor of History & Education, called upon the city of Nashville – where almost 5,000 black students now attend schools that are more than 90 percent black and 90 percent poor – to devise a new plan for desegregating the city’s schools. Erickson argued that Nashville should look beyond the busing model it used from the 1970s to 1990s to become a national leader in developing new approaches that can help the city build “high-quality schools for all of its students.” Erickson draws on data and analysis from hers newly-released book, Making the Unequal Metropolis: School Desegregation and Its Limits (University of Chicago Press). In the book, Erickson uses Nashville as a case study of the forces that shaped school desegregation efforts and the on-going legacy of those policies.

Watch a talk on desegregation that Erickson recently gave that aired on Ohio public television.

Published Thursday, Apr 21, 2016