66 pages • 2 hours read
Jonathan KozolThe Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context: Racial Segregation in the United States
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains references to racism, racially motivated violence, inequality, and systemic injustice.
Society in the United States has long been separated along racial lines to varying degrees. This segregation has been enforced both legally and socially, depending on the era, and has led to great inequalities between races. Following the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, many states began to pass laws that ensured Black people would be able to not integrate into white society. In the South, a collection of state and local laws known as Jim Crow laws required “separate but equal” spaces for Black and white people, including schools, neighborhoods, seating on public transportation, and even water fountains. None of these spaces, however, were truly “equal,” and Black people often had to make do with significantly inferior resources.
In the 1950s and 60s, Supreme Court cases like Brown v. Board of Education and Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States helped to bring an end to legal segregation, along with legislation like the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Fair Housing Act.
Although segregation is no longer legally enforced and legal protections prohibit discrimination based on race, a number of social practices continue to promote the separation of races, and in The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, Kozol argues that the nation’s public schools are as segregated as ever. While Black and Hispanic students are not explicitly prohibited from any particular school, practices like school district zoning, complex admission policies to exclusive schools, and white flight from urban centers mean that many children of color remain racially isolated and, by extension, systemically disadvantaged.
Authorial Context: Jonathon Kozol and Education Advocacy
Born in 1936, Jonathan Kozol is a well-known American writer, educator, and activist. Kozol graduated from Harvard University in 1958 before spending several years in France and England. He returned to the United States in 1964, during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. That year, law enforcement officers and members of the Ku Klux Klan murdered three young activists running freedom schools and organizing voter registration drives in Mississippi. This tragedy deeply affected Kozol and motivated him to volunteer as a reading tutor at a summer freedom school in Boston’s Black community. He grew attached to his students and their families and became a fourth-grade teacher in Boston’s segregated schools when the summer ended.
Kozol became deeply involved in the Civil Rights Movement and began writing about his experience with inner-city children. He has since traveled the country, visiting public schools and speaking with children, teachers, and principals about their experiences. He has written many books about the intersection of poverty, race, and educational opportunities and has received several fellowships and awards for his work. His first book, Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools, was published in 1967. It described his first year teaching in Boston’s public schools, focusing on the inequalities his Black students faced. The book won the 1968 National Book Award. Kozol has published more than a dozen other books, including Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America in 1988 and Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools in 1991. His most recent book, An End to Inequality, was published in 2024.
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