Integrated

A NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY BEST BOOK OF 2025 • A powerful, incisive reckoning with the impacts of school desegregation that traces four generations of the author’s family to show how the implementation of integration decimated Black school systems and did much of the Black community a disservice

"Rooks deftly sketches this lamentable, sobering history."—The Atlantic

On May 17, 1954, Brown v. Board of Education determined that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional. Heralded as a massive victory for civil rights, the decision’s goal was to give Black children equitable access to educational opportunities and clear a path to a better future. Yet in the years following the ruling, schools in predominantly Black neighborhoods were shuttered or saw their funding dwindle; Black educators were fired en masse; and Black children faced discrimination and violence from white peers and educators as they joined resource-rich schools that were reticent to accept the new students.

Award-winning scholar Noliwe Rooks weaves together sociological data, cultural history, and personal records to challenge the idea that integration was a boon for Black children. At once assiduously researched and deeply engaging, Integrated tells the story of how education has remained both a tool for community progress and a seemingly inscrutable cultural puzzle. Rooks’s deft hand turns the story of integration’s past and future on its head and shows how we may better understand and support generations of students to come.