Girls on the Front Line: Malaika Favorite, Gender, and School Desegregation after Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka

This article examines the life and ideas of Malaika Favorite, one of a vastly disproportionate number of Black girls and young women who mostly volunteered but were also enlisted to desegregate historically white schools throughout the United States—before and after the Supreme court decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Indeed, girls were the plaintiffs in almost a dozen school desegregation cases, that were initiated in the immediate aftermath of World War II in over six states, including Louisiana, Virginia, and Texas. Young women and girls, almost exclusively, attempted to register at white schools, testified in court, met with local white administrators and school boards, and talked with reporters from both the Black and white press. For Malaika Favorite and many other Black girls and young women, school desegregation was their call to arms, a mission they felt to be peculiarly their own. Those who participated uniformly shared a perception that segregated public schools were a political and moral crisis.