This Product of Dallas ISD Owes a Lot to Courageous Desegregation Icons

The death this week of civil rights icon Linda Brown, who symbolized one of the most transformative education cases in U.S. history in Brown v. Board of Education, reminds me that I lived through the desegregation of Dallas schools. And I'm better for it. I attended Dallas ISD's T.L. Marsalis Elementary in the early 1970s, and I can't remember a single white classmate. I can recall only one white family ever on our street.Our Glenview neighborhood in Oak Cliff was filled with hard-working parents who wanted every opportunity for their children.That's why when it came time for me to attend high school, a big group of us black kids were bused across town to the magnet and career development program at Skyline High School. It's hard to believe today, but Skyline in 1980 was made up of a majority of white students. New district rules allowed kids from our part of town to choose to make the 45-minute trek to Pleasant Grove each day on something called a minority-to-majority transfer.Remember those?  Continue reading...