With May 2024 marking the 70th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision declaring separate schools for Black and white children unconstitutional, revisit the 2014 FRONTLINE documentary, “Separate and Unequal,” an investigation into the resurgence of school segregation in America. (Aired 2014)
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In the 2014 documentary “Separate and Unequal,” FRONTLINE traveled to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the site of one of the country’s longest battles over school integration, to examine the growing racial divide in schools and the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education.
As the documentary explored, in 1981, after a 25-year legal fight, the East Baton Rouge Parish School District was forced to desegregate its schools. But roughly 30 years later, frustrated over the district’s many low-performing schools, a group of mostly white, middle-class parents and business leaders tried to break away and form a new city, St. George, with its own separate schools. The film documented this controversial effort, which mirrored similar breakaway movements around the U.S. that proponents said would create more community-oriented schools and improve their childrens’ education and critics said would reverse hard-fought civil rights gains and leave schools less racially and economically diverse.
In April 2024, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that St. George could be incorporated as a city.
“Separate and Unequal” was a FRONTLINE co-production with Left/Right Docs. It was produced and directed by Mary Robertson and co-produced by Kyle Spencer. It was written by Frank Koughan and Mary Robertson. The deputy executive producer of FRONTLINE was Raney Aronson-Rath. The executive producer of FRONTLINE was David Fanning.
Explore additional reporting on “Separate and Unequal” on our website:
#Documentary #Education #SchoolSegregation #Louisiana
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FRONTLINE is produced at GBH in Boston and is broadcast nationwide on PBS. Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional support for FRONTLINE is provided by the Abrams Foundation, Park Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund, with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, and additional support from Koo and Patricia Yuen.
CHAPTERS:
00:00 – Prologue
02:24 – Some Baton Rouge Residents Plan to Form a New City With Its Own Schools
05:22 – Concerns About Deepening School Segregation in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 2014
09:47 – An Inside Look at Woodlawn High
18:38 – The History of Desegregation in Baton Rouge Schools
27:14 – End
