ALERT Collective Blog

Before and during the Civil War, support for educational opportunities for African Americans came mainly from religious groups, including the Society of Friends and the Methodist Episcopal Church. These groups and other supporters believed that education for all benefits society as a whole, and that education was a crucial and necessary step in preparing " the minds of this people...for that state of freedom which is their right, and which they will one day most assuredly obtain ." Those opposed – white supremacist groups led by the Democratic Party (also called the “White Man’s Party” at the time) – argued vehemently that education would only cause African Americans to revolt against the government, or make African American men appear as more eligible suitors for White daughters. Seven schools existed for African Americans in Delaware when the Civil War ended, six of which were likely organized by the Society of Friends. Because the Democratic Party controlled the state legi...

  Equal Pay Day , a symbolic floating date recognized since 1996 in a number of different countries to highlight the gender wage gap, signifies the number of additional days the average woman must work to achieve the same amount of pay as the average man in the previous year. This year in the U.S., Equal Pay Day is recognized today, March 24, meaning that women must work an extra 83 days before earning the same pay as men. Another way of stating this discrepancy is that, in 2020, the average woman earned 82 cents for every dollar a man earned for the same level of work. Though it may not seem like much, this gap makes an incredible difference over time; the National Committee on Pay Equity estimates that, over a working lifetime, the pay gap can cost women between $700,000 and $2 million , including salaries, Social Security benefits, and pensions. Equal Pay Day has evolved to track the pay gap for more than just gender. The Equal Pay calendar in the U.S. now also includes AAPI ...

The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision may have made the “separate but equal” doctrine unconstitutional, but it did not change the reality of segregated schooling for many Black children in Delaware. In the fall of 1954, 11 African American students, known as the Milford Eleven, were the first to integrate Milford High School . Their first two days were uneventful, but by the third day hundreds of parents and community members had assembled at the school to express their anger  by throwing objects at the African American students and calling them names. The local police refused to protect the children from the growing crowds and the Delaware State Police were called in to escort the students to school. Many white families then began pulling their children out of school in protest, and less than a month after the start of school the Milford Board of Education decided to disenroll the Milford Eleven. Ten of the 11 students’ families brought suit against the school district, a...

  A recent poll by the polling firm Echelon Insights revealed that Antifa violence was the sixth most concerning issue for Republican voters, just under socialism, illegal immigration, and general moral decline. Democratic politicians have condemned the violence of Antifa and even the Anti-defamation League has said “ most established civil rights organizations criticize antifa tactics as dangerous and counterproductive.” Despite the fact that white supremacist terrorism is far more deadly , Antifa, continues to be the focus of a lot of peoples fears.  Who is Antifa? To put it simply, the label Antifa is adopted by a loose affiliation of left and far-left activist (mostly socialist and anarchist) groups that are connected by a s trong desire to combat Fascism and white supremacy, sometimes literally . Antifa see themselves as something of white blood cells, technically destructive, but for the greater good and health of the body politic. Most Americans first heard of Antifa ...

In October 2020, the unjust educational funding formula used in Delaware schools appeared in the news as the Delaware NAACP, ACLU and other organizations announced that they had reached a settlement with the State of Delaware. This lawsuit was brought after various organizations spent 20 years lobbying the state legislature to overhaul the state’s 80-year-old funding system, which does not provide funding based on student needs.     Delaware’s history of unequal educational reform began with the ratification of the Delaware Constitution of 1897 , which codified the segregation of schools into law. Delaware was one of 17 states to have legally mandated the segregation of schools. The result was a separate educational system for African American children, and African Americans would spend the next 50 plus years struggling to address the issues of equality and separation in education. Beginning in the 1930’s the NAACP began a campaign to challenge school segregati...