My research examines how white political elites and communities used legal, institutional, and governance strategies to reshape American education and democracy after Brown v. Board of Education. I trace how these actors redirected white educational authority away from democratic control—using institutional migration and privatization to preserve racial hierarchy and embed segregationist politics within broader political conservatism. Across a variety of projects, I show how struggles over school desegregation transformed not only education policy and the school landscape, but the structure of American democracy itself.
Boundary Politics and the Suburbanization of School Segregation in St. Louis
This project examines how suburban governance and school district boundaries structured the persistence of educational segregation in the St. Louis metropolitan region after Brown v. Board of Education. Through this research, Amy Shelton (my co-researcher) and I trace how consolidation efforts, administrative decision-making, and local boundary politics produced a fragmented school district map that preserved racial segregation while appearing to legally comply with Brown. Surburbanization in the St. Louis region created durable forms of segregation through district formation, annexation battles, and the alignment of school district boundaries with housing and municipal zoning practices. This project shows how metropolitan desegregation failed: not because of inaction, but because segregation was built into regional spatial design and reorganized through local governance that maintained segregationist structures.
Sample Publications:
Amy Shelton and Joseph R. Nichols. “School District Boundaries and the Preservation of Segregation in Suburban St. Louis.” Missouri Historical Review. Submitted (under review).
Privatizing Massive Resistance and the Institutional Afterlife of Jim Crow
This project examines how massive resistance survived the formal end of Jim Crow through the privatization of educational governance after the civil rights era. Rather than collapsing in the face of federal desegregation enforcement, segregationist politics migrated from public institutions into private educational spaces that reconstituted white authority beyond democratic oversight. Focusing on the rise of segregation academies and related policy networks, I show how privatization functioned as a governing strategy—one that preserved racial hierarchy while reframing resistance around the politics of freedom and liberty. I argue that education became a central arena in which post-civil rights conservatism learned how to use anti-government tools to govern without formal segregation.
Sample Publications:
Nichols, Joseph. “The Rise of Segregation Academies and the Institutional Migration of White Educational Authority in the 1960s South.” History of Education Quarterly. Revise and Resubmit (in revision)
Executive Power and Governing Segregation after Brown
This project examines how southern governors reshaped white educational authority after the collapse of formal massive resistance in the 1960s. Rather than continuing to openly defy federal desegregation mandates, southern governors redirected their influence to new forms of institutional legitimation and governance beyond the public school system. The project shows how governors used their executive power to facilitate the migration of segregationist politics into private educational spaces that were formally lawful yet democratically evasive. I argue that this transformation reshaped both the educational landscape and the practice of democracy in the post-civil rights South.
Teacher Integration, Institutional Accommodation, and the Limits of Brown
This project examines the limits of post-Brown civil rights enforcement through the lens of teacher integration and educational labor. Focused on Brooks v. Moberly in Missouri, I look at how courts, state officials, and local school districts translated desegregation mandates into administrative practices that preserved white authority over employment, governance, and professional hierarchies. This project highlights institutional accommodation—formal compliance that limited substantive racial change. Through this research, I reframe teacher integration as a governance problem and reveal how civil rights law was hollowed out through routine bureaucratic and judicial processes.
Sample Publications:
Civic Motherhood and White Political Moderation after Brown
This project examines how white women’s civic activism reshaped the politics of school desegregation and educational governance in the post-Brown South. Focusing on Help Our Public Education (HOPE), I explore how maternal identity, middle- and upper-class respectability, and claims of political moderation functioned as tools for preserving white educational authority while distancing integration politics from the overt extremism of massive resistance. I show how women’s civic networks translated gendered forms of legitimacy into real influence over education policy and governance. This project reveals how the politics of moderation operated not simply as an alternative to resistance but as a durable adaptation of it—one that reshaped education, governance, and how white communities engaged with the politics of integration.
Sample Publications:
Nichols, Joseph R. and Alyssa Ignaczak. “Help Our Public Education (HOPE), Concerned Motherhood, and Integrating Atlanta’s Public Schools.” Georgia Historical Quarterly 109, no. 4: 250-274.