Clint Smith Quotes

Progress for black Americans depends on good schools because education is the last great equalizer.

Students of color who attended integrated schools in the decades immediately following Brown were more likely to graduate high school, go to college, earn higher wages, live healthier lifestyles, and not have a criminal record than their peers in segregated schools.

Public schools were designed as the great equalizers of our society - the place where all children could have access to educational opportunities to make something of themselves in adulthood.

During the decades after Brown v. Board of Education there was terrific progress. Tens of thousands of public schools were integrated racially. During that time the gap between black and white achievement narrowed.

I am opposed to busing for the purpose of achieving racial balance in our schools.

Our schools are more segregated today than they have ever been since 1968. The schools that I visit hardly have any white students…. Schools that had desegregated, are now resegregating.

The Problem We All Live With

We must recognize that all the civil rights laws in the world are not going to solve the problem of minority underachievement. Ultimately, blacks and Hispanics are going to have to see that their solution is largely in their own hands.

The NAACP was even considering earlier this summer reassessing their position on school integration.

I cannot understand how the education of this United States of America has been fooled time and time again. Either make it separate but equal or integrate, therefore it will be equal. And it has been separate and unequal.

Segregation has no place in the education system.

I'd like to work on job and educational opportunities for all.

The Time to Succeed Coalition brings together an unprecedented group of leaders from education and business, communities and academia to say that it is time to strike the shackles of an outdated school calendar from our disadvantaged schools.

A basic element of the American dream is equal access to education as the lubricant of social and economic mobility.

All I demand for the black man is, that the white people shall take their heels off his neck, and let him have a chance to rise by his own efforts.

I want my kids to graduate from high school. But that's not enough. I also want them to go to college. Why? Because rich people's kids go to college. And if that's good enough for them, it's good enough for my kids. Because you know what? College graduates don't tend to go to jail as frequently as nongraduates.

I think in some cases busing did improve the situation in some areas; in some cases it didn't. We had busing in St. Louis, and it has been ended and we are using other methods of trying to better integrate the schools.

Well of course there's been a great deal of progress over the last 40 years. We don't have laws that segregate black people within the society any longer.

America's 'social contract' is equal opportunity... yet we have failed in achieving that seminal goal.

If we don't empower families to be able to have a quality education, then their children - for the first time in American history, truly the first time - will not have the same economic opportunities.

Obama was elected in a flourish of promise that many in the African-American community believed would help not only to symbolize African-American progress since the Civil War and Civil Rights Acts but that his presidency would result in doors opening in the halls of power as had never been seen before by black America.

Busing has only achieved white flight.

I favor school integration. I do not favor mandatory busing. The only kids who were bused are the poor children. The rich parents either move or put the kid in private schools.

The point we must aim at is to obtain admittance for our children to the nearest and the best schoolhouse.

If this boy passes the examination, he will be admitted; and if the white students choose to withdraw, all of the income of the college will be devoted to his education.