Video of ‘A Dream Again Deferred?’

Audience members at UNCC Center City auditorium when asked to raise hands if they were education advocates. — Audience at UNCC Center City auditorium when asked to raise hands if they were education advocates. (From video by Daniel Crawford)

May 5, 2015

It was billed as a commemoration of Swann v. Mecklenburg, the court case brought by Julius Chambers that led the U.S. Supreme Court in a Charlotte case to approve the use of mandatory busing to overcome the effects of segregation mandated by local law.

But the room May 5 was filled with people for whom the case represented a troubling reminder that today’s Charlotte schools are again segregated, often by race and also by socioeconomics.

The video below records the comments of journalist and “Dream Long Deferred” author Frye Gaillard, who returned from Alabama to recount key moments in the Swann era, and UNCC researcher Amy Hawn Nelson, whose research dissected the hypersegregated schools that have resulted from school policy changes made in the wake of the 1999 closing of the Swann case and the prohibition on using race in student assignment.

Longtime TV reporter and documentary journalist Steve Crump moderated the discussion.

The slides shown to the audience during Nelson’s presentation are posted below the video.

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