|Dispelling the Martin Luther King Mythology
|TRUTH: The civil rights struggle continues into the present.|
| Schools, students, and teachers are, just as they were in the 1960's, at center stage. Integration, multicultural curriculums, tracking, school funding, the rights of gay teachers and students, graduation rates for poor and minority students, and so on, are all vital issues of the ongoing civil rights struggle.
In 1961 it was college students, black and white, that participated in lunch counter sit-ins and freedom rides and created a national movement.
In 1963 in Birmingham, the movement succeeded because school children joined the protests and went to jail in great numbers.
In 1965 in Selma it was teachers who led the protests for voting rights.
The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision (that is said to have started the civil rights movement) set the goal of an equal and quality education for everyone. Yet this goal is farther than ever from being met.