Chicago Schooling, Benjamin Willis, and the Fight Against Integration

The landmark Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education placed public school systems at the heart of America's racial conflict. School districts around the country fought to preserve their segregated institutions. In Chicago, the public school distract remained intransigent, claiming that the ruling did not apply to them. Several figures, most notably school Superintendent Benjamin Willis spearheaded a decade long conflict between administrators and Chicago's Black community.