Bowdoin College Bowdoin Digital Commons Honors Projects Student Scholarship and Creative Work 2021 Promises Unfulfilled: Integration and Segregation in Metropolitan Philadelphia Public Schools, 1954-2009 Nina Nayiri McKay Bowdoin College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/honorsprojects Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation McKay, Nina Nayiri, "Promises Unfulfilled: Integration and Segregation in Metropolitan Philadelphia Public Schools, 1954-2009" (2021). Honors Projects. 245. https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/honorsprojects/245 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship and Creative Work at Bowdoin Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Projects by an authorized administrator of Bowdoin Digital Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Promises Unfulfilled: Integration and Segregation in Metropolitan Philadelphia Public Schools, 1954-2009 An Honors Paper for the Department of History By Nina Nayiri McKay Bowdoin College, 2021 ©2021 Nina Nayiri McKay 2 McKay Introduction In the mainstream historical narrative about school segregation in the United States, Philadelphia is rarely mentioned. Sandwiched between the nation’s largest city, New York, and its capital, Washington, DC., Philadelphia is often left in the shadows of its better-known mid- Atlantic neighbors. The city also did not garner national attention during the era of school desegregation; it was not the site of a court case that made it past the state level, and it did not see mass protests by segregationists of the kind that made fellow northern city Boston a national symbol of resistance to integration. But Philadelphia was home to one of the most persistent, long-lasting efforts at school integration in any city across the country.