The country’s most prominent civil rights group has come to Raleigh to draw attention to what it calls a growing erosion of the gains made since a 1954 Supreme Court decision made segregated schools illegal.
Using Wake County’s ongoing debate over school diversity as a backdrop, the NAACP is holding a national conference on education in Raleigh to argue that schools around the country are, in essence, returning to Jim Crow-era patterns of segregation.
“Resegregation is on the rise,” said the Rev. William Barber, chairman of the state NAACP chapter. “The rates now are worse than in the 1970s.”