desegregation

Harris’ ambitions bloomed at Thousand Oaks Elementary, where she was among the first bused to a new school as part of Berkeley’s voluntary desegregation program while other parts of the country resisted merging districts.

She joined La Mutua last year after discovering while working on the Alamosa school desegregation case that family members had once belonged.

She and others are working on a research project about a 1914 school desegregation case backed by La Mutua that was among the earliest of its kind in the country.

The ask from civil rights protesters was not that government leave them alone, as Richard Mack would say, leave them alone, but rather that the federal government would enforce federal laws which require desegregation, which require due process and equal rights.

The district itself was founded in 1970 amid federal desegregation orders, when residents broke away from the Jefferson County Schools and agreed to pay an extra tax.