School Integration

The landmark Brown v. Board of Education desegregation ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court came out in May 1954, but it wasn’t until 1959 that Miami-Dade County’s schools admitted the first group of African Americans to Orchard Villa Elementary School, which had been all white.  Seven-year-old Gary Range and three other black students broke barriers when they walked onto the grounds of the Liberty City school. White students left the school, black students and faculty were transferred in, and by the summer of 1960, only one white student remained. In the 1970s, busing of students erupted as a new flashpoint in the battle over integration. Today, some civil rights activists and researchers say some schools in Miami-Dade and the rest of the country have undergone a “re-segregation” process.

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