Dream Town
Shaker Heights and the Quest for Racial Equity
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Narrated by:
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Debi Tinsley
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Laura Meckler
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By:
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Laura Meckler
About this listen
Can a group of well-intentioned people fulfill the promise of racial integration in America?
In this searing and deeply researched examination of the promises and realities of racial integration, award-winning Washington Post journalist Laura Meckler aims to uncover where the problem lies and to shed light on what’s being done to move forward—in housing, in education, and in the promise of shared community.
In the late 1950s, Shaker Heights became a national model for housing integration. And beginning in the seventies, it was known as a crown jewel in the national move to racially integrate schools. The school district built a national reputation for academic excellence and diversity, serving as a model for how white and Black Americans can not just coexist but thrive together. Meckler—herself a product of Shaker Heights—takes a deeper look into the place that shaped her, investigating its complicated history and its ongoing challenges in order to untangle the myth from the truth. She confronts an enduring, and troubling, question—if Shaker Heights has worked so hard at racial equity, why does a racial academic achievement gap persist?
In telling the stories of the Shakerites who built and live in this community, Meckler asks: Can a group of well-intentioned people fulfill the promise of racial integration in America? What does success look like and has Shaker achieved it? What are Black Americans asked to sacrifice and what will white people have to give up? The result is a complex portrait of a place that, while never perfect, has achieved more than most, and a road map for communities that seek to do the same.
©2023 Laura Meckler (P)2023 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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- Unabridged
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In 1950, Fairfax County, Virginia, was 90 percent white, 10 percent African American, with a little more than 100 families who were "other". Currently the African American percentage of the population is about the same, but the Anglo white population is less than 50 percent, and there are families of Asian, African, Middle Eastern, and Latin American origin living all over the county. A Nation of Nations follows the lives of a few immigrants to Fairfax County over recent decades as they gradually "Americanize".
By: Tom Gjelten
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Savage Inequalities
- Children in America's Schools
- By: Jonathan Kozol
- Narrated by: Mark Winston
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Jonathan Kozol traveled from the most blighted neighborhoods of Chicago to the urban wreckage of Camden, New Jersey; from the ghetto suburbs of Detroit to inner-city San Antonio; East St. Louis, and Washington, D.C. Everywhere, he discovered separate systems of public schools, with the children of America's poor condemned to schools that are underfunded, understaffed, physically crumbling, and imbued with despair.
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Excellent book for budding education professionals
- By Amazon Customer on 10-25-17
By: Jonathan Kozol
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Trailblazer
- A Pioneering Journalist's Fight to Make the Media Look More Like America
- By: Dorothy Butler Gilliam
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Dorothy Butler Gilliam, whose 50-year-career as a journalist put her in the forefront of the fight for social justice, offers a comprehensive view of racial relations and the media in the US.
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Struggled to finish
- By SL41639 on 04-06-20
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My Grandfather's Son
- A Memoir
- By: Clarence Thomas
- Narrated by: Clarence Thomas
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Provocative, inspiring, and unflinchingly honest, My Grandfather's Son is the story of one of America's most remarkable and controversial leaders, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, told in his own words.
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Wonderful read
- By Amazon Customer on 10-17-21
By: Clarence Thomas
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Where You Are Is Not Who You Are
- A Memoir
- By: Ursula Burns
- Narrated by: Ursula Burns
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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The first Black female CEO of a Fortune 500 company looks back at her life and her career at Xerox, sharing unique insights on American business and corporate life, the workers she has always valued, racial and economic justice, how greed is threatening democracy, and the obstacles she’s conquered being Black and a woman.
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Relatable story, flaws and all
- By Anonymous User on 01-06-22
By: Ursula Burns
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Yale Needs Women
- How the First Group of Girls Rewrote the Rules of an Ivy League Giant
- By: Anne Gardiner Perkins
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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In the winter of 1969, from big cities to small towns, young women across the country sent in applications to Yale University for the first time. The Ivy League institution dedicated to graduating "1,000 male leaders" each year had finally decided to open its doors to the nation's top female students. The landmark decision was a huge step forward for women's equality in education. Or was it?
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A Long Struggle
- By Anonymous User on 08-21-20
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My Vanishing Country
- A Memoir
- By: Bakari Sellers
- Narrated by: Bakari Sellers
- Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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What J. D. Vance did for Appalachia with Hillbilly Elegy, CNN analyst and one of the youngest state representatives in South Carolina history Bakari Sellers does for the rural South, in this important book that illuminates the lives of America’s forgotten Black working-class men and women. Part memoir, part historical and cultural analysis, My Vanishing Country is an eye-opening journey through the South's past, present, and future.
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What America Needs NOW!!!
- By Unknown on 05-22-20
By: Bakari Sellers
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Disintegration
- The Splintering of Black America
- By: Eugene Robinson
- Narrated by: Alan Bomar Jones
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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The African American population in the United States has always been seen as a single entity: a "Black America" with unified interests and needs. In his groundbreaking book Disintegration, longtime Washington Post journalist Eugene Robinson argues that, through decades of desegregation, affirmative action, and immigration, the concept of Black America has shattered.
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Written for Popular Consumption
- By Catherine S. Read on 06-03-11
By: Eugene Robinson
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Letters to a Young Teacher
- By: Jonathan Kozol
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In these affectionate letters to Francesca, a first-grade teacher at an inner-city school in Boston, Jonathan Kozol vividly describes his repeated visits to her classroom while, under Francesca's likably irreverent questioning, also revealing his own most personal stories of the years that he has spent in public schools.
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A must read for new teachers
- By Santiago on 03-31-10
By: Jonathan Kozol
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A Mighty Long Way
- My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School
- By: Carlotta Walls Lanier
- Narrated by: Peter Fernandez, Lizan Mitchell
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1951, Carlotta Walls Lanier was one of the nine African-American students to integrate Little Rock High School, and the first to earn a diploma. Here she provides a firsthand account of her experiences - including the bombing that rocked her home, the constant threats she and her classmates faced, and the pressure and bullying her parents endured.
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Very insightful book
- By karen feek on 01-05-21
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Jane Crow
- The Life of Pauli Murray
- By: Rosalind Rosenberg
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards
- Length: 18 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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A mixed-race orphan, Murray grew up in segregated North Carolina before escaping to New York, where she attended Hunter College and became a labor activist in the 1930s. When she applied to graduate school at the University of North Carolina, where her white great-great-grandfather had been a trustee, she was rejected because of her race. She went on to graduate first in her class at Howard Law School, only to be rejected for graduate study again at Harvard University this time on account of her sex. Undaunted, Murray forged a singular career in the law.
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What a legacy!!!
- By Paul on 03-08-21
What listeners say about Dream Town
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- James E Walker
- 08-25-23
Surreal Read (for me)
My family moved into Shaker in May 1967. I know many of the people in the book. I graduated from the high school in 77, and my brother in '79. I remember my parents discussing many of these issues.
This gives me a different perspective on my experience. Excellent read.
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- Julia's mom
- 01-03-24
excellent overview of the complexity of integration in Shaker Heights
I really liked the way the story was told with each chapter focusing on a family or person involved with the integration movement in Shaker Heights, Ohio. The book really highlighted just how complex the issues of integration are, and how even in communities where there are well meaning folks wanting to address issues of segregation and discrimination - the issues are not always so black and white (no pun intended). But Shaker Heights is still one of the only communities in the Country to even try to address issues of segregation and there are many lessons to be learned from the work that has been done and continues to be done in this community. A worthwhile read for anyone who works planning, schools, fair housing etc.
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- Brady Wilkerson
- 09-08-23
Couldn’t stop until I finished
I really enjoyed it, particularly from the many perspectives. A different bookI just finished was Generations which added the dynamics of age to the racial and diversity challenges that this book offered. As a Boomer graduate it expanded many previous thoughts. Thanks!
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