Carl A. Grant Scholars Lecture Featuring Jamel K. Donnor

March 30, 2017, Noon - 1 pm

Educational Sciences Room 259, 1025 West Johnson Street

Jamel K. Donnor

Associate Professor, School of Education, The College of William and Mary

Cowan v. Bolivar County, Resistance to Brown, and the Forging of Racial Fortuity

A school desegregation lawsuit was filed a decade after Brown v. Board of Education in Bolivar County MS. For 52 years, the Bolivar County Board of Education evaded the Supreme Court’s “all deliberate speed” dictum by using litigation as a tool of opposition. Cowan is not only noteworthy for highlighting the reproductive power of administrative delay, it is also an example of what the late legal scholar Derrick Bell calls racial fortuity. With the case settlement on March 13, 2017, Cowan is a reminder that the quest for racial equity in education is an unending endeavor.