The number of African American teachers in Missouri decreased after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954. The problem persists more than a half-century later, according to a recent report by St. Louis University researchers.
In “The Displacement of Black Teachers in Missouri Post-Brown, 1954-1970,” the researchers write that over 2,230 Black educators were removed from classrooms across the state during integration as Missouri moved to be in compliance with the Supreme Court ruling. The July report also outlined the displacement of Black teachers in 16 other Southern and border states during the desegregation of schools.
Since 1954, there hasn't been parity between Black students and teachers, and the gap continues to widen, said Joseph Nichols, associate professor of education at St. Louis University and co-author of the report.
“This is a really important indicator about who is represented in schools, how does that affect their education and their identity development, and what does that say about our commitment to certain groups of students over others as a state,” he said.
As states moved toward workforce integration during the mid- to- late 1900s, Black teachers faced a multitude of challenges, and job security became their greatest. Many of the terminated or demoted teachers in Missouri were from rural or small-towns.
The report found integration hurt many all-Black schools, especially those in rural areas with small Black populations. As African American students enrolled in all-white schools, local boards of education closed their schools and terminated their teachers. Those same boards often did not hire Black teachers because some white families did not want their children learning from a Black educator. Also, open teaching positions were not offered to former educators at Black schools. Many of them had to take teaching assistant roles and staff support positions. Many Black educators were also barred from teaching core subject classes.
This displacement of Black teachers during the 1950s to 1970s set the stage for what we see today, said Alyssa Ignaczak, a Ph.D. candidate at St. Louis University and co-author of the report.
“There were Black teachers; we had that parity,” said Ignaczak, who is also the managing director of national recruitment for Teach for America. “We had really unequal systems — access, opportunities and funding — but students did see themselves, and we know that matters so much for kids' academics and sense of belonging and sense of self.”
Ignaczak said it is upsetting that school districts and education organizations are still having the same conversations about recruitment as they did in the 1970s. She hopes policymakers see this report as a way to tackle the entire problem and not just recruitment.
“You can only recruit people to teach if they have the opportunities and the educational access to be eligible in the first place,” she said. “We can't just say, 'Let's target recruitment,’ if we're not also saying, ‘How do we ensure that Black students have access to quality educational resources?’”
The Black teacher displacement report shows that from 1954 to 1970, there were 31,584 African American teachers displaced from the workforce in Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. Those states would have been expected to have over 150,000 Black teachers integrating schools, but instead, by 1970, there were only about 119,000.
Those who lost their jobs or were demoted, also felt the economic strain. Across the 17 states, there was an income loss of nearly $245 million in 1970, which is equivalent to over $1.7 billion today.
Nichols said the loss of income greatly impacted rural and urban cities because it forced people to move to other cities with better opportunities.
“There were a number of losses that occurred, because oftentimes people had to seek other employment,” he said. “It's easy to measure income; it's more difficult to measure the mentorship, the kind of spiritual leadership that some of these individuals may have participated in at their local church communities, and I think that is something that is hard to get back.”
For the past few years, the number of Black teachers in classrooms across the state continues to fluctuate. Today, there are over 72,300 teachers in Missouri, with about 4,300 Black teachers, which is about 6% of the total teacher workforce. Missouri’s percentage of Black teachers is on par with the national average of Black teachers.
Nichols said he believes the Brown v. Board of Education ruling was not intended to lead to the displacement of Black teachers, but because data shows that it did, legislators should create laws to ensure there is a proportionate number of Black teachers represented in all schools.
“There are limitations to what courts can do when it comes to questions of racial justice and equity,” Nichols said. “We, as a society, have to do a better job of engaging in community-based conversation about what those questions are and how we work through them, because that's where you really create a democratic society that extends justice, equity and opportunity to everyone that's a member of the community.”
