Much has changed, but too much remains the same

Fifty years ago today, segregationists went to bed comforted by the fact that even in a changing world, one thing they didn't have to do was send their little white children off to be schooled along side Negroes.
The next morning, the segregationists' dreams were shattered by the Supreme Court of the United States, which issued its ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. The court declared that separate educational facilities were inherently unequal and that they deprived black students of equal protection under the law.
The ruling was followed by months and years of ugly turmoil. Governors stood in school doorways and on university steps declaring that no black student would ever cross. Public schools were closed by their white overseers rather than admit black students, and private schools were established for no other reason than to maintain educational segregation.
Most of that was going on in the South, but decades later northern cities were racked by ugly dissension as courts attempted to enforce the principles of Brown. Angry protests greeted desegregation plans that involved consolidating schools and busing students across various artificial boundaries.
The Jim Crow segregation of the 1950s no longer exists, but de facto segregation is thriving in some places -- and as stories on A1 and A3 of today's paper attest, the Mahoning Valley is not immune.
A half century ago, a battle for equality was won, but winning the war remains an elusive goal.