The road to civil rights in the United States went down many paths, but one of the most important ones involved schools. For years, African Americans were forced to study in separate, inferior schools, sentencing many of them to a life of poverty without hope of upward mobility. This volume allows readers to examine how that outlook changed in the middle of the twentieth century. Readers will learn why the old system went unchallenged for so long and how the schools in the United States finally opened their doors to all.