Switching for Survival and Success? Black Students’ Struggles, Shifting, and Solidarity Within the St. Louis Desegregation Plan

ABSTRACT

The St. Louis Voluntary Desegregation program, and its corollary, the Interdistrict Transfer Plan, have existed in some form since 1983. At its height, approximately 13,000 Black students from the city of St. Louis transferred into predominantly White and suburban school districts, representing the largest voluntary desegregation plan in the United States. County and school district leaders responsible for the plan have slowly reduced the number of Black transfer students, and a November 2016 agreement extended the plan for a five-year period to allow about 1,000 new students to enroll through the 2023–2024 school year. Emanating from qualitative interviews with 37 Black former students who participated in the plan between 1983 and 2018 (Waves 1–4), this article captures participants’ experiences, agency, their struggles, and solidarity efforts to ensure their chances of surviving and succeeding in schooling contexts that drastically differed from their home and community environments. Given the impending ending of this plan at the end of the 2023–2024 school year, findings provide implications for research, educational policy and reform, and schooling practices that create and sustain culturally affirming and educationally enriching environments for Black students.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded in part by the E. Desmond Lee Endowed Professorship of Urban Education at the University of Missouri-St. Louis—a position held by the first author. Additional funding was received from the St. Louis, Missouri Public School District and the Spencer Foundation. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of the school district or its administrators.

Notes on contributors

Jerome E. Morris

Jerome E. Morris, Ph.D. is the E. Desmond Lee Endowed Professor of Urban Education at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, 1 University Boulevard, St. Louis, MO 63121; [email protected]. Dr. Morris founded and directs the Center for Communally Bonded Research. His interdisciplinary and empirically-based research examines the institutional structure and culture in schools, highlights the centrality of the U.S. South in African-Americans’ experiences, provides innovative conceptual frameworks to study marginalized communities, and cultivates meaningful partnerships with communities and schools. Inducted as a 2022 Fellow within the American Educational Research Association (AERA), he recently served as a Vice-President for AERA. Dr. Morris has received numerous research awards and grants, over the course of three decades, to support his scholarship, including the Lyle M. Spencer Research Award of $1 million dollars to investigate the development of his theory of Communally-bonded Schooling.

Zori A. Paul

Zori A. Paul (she/her), Ph.D. is a licensed mental health counselor and clinical assistant professor in the Department of Counselor Education and Counseling Psychology at Marquette University (113M Schroeder Health Complex, Milwaukee, WI 53201; [email protected]). Her research focuses on intersecting marginalized identities and mental wellbeing, cross-cultural mentorship, and ethical social media use for mental health professionals, respectively.