Education · Race · American politics
Research
My research examines how white political elites and their constituents used legal and institutional strategies as well as government levers 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, maintain segregationist structures, embed the politics of segregation within broader a political conservatism. My current research shows how the purposes of schooling were (and still are) contested, redirected, and undermined by political institutions, public policy, and organized resistance to racial equality. I’m particularly interested in how struggles over school desegregation transformed not only education policy and the school landscape, but the structure of American democracy itself.
Books in Progress
Nichols, Joseph R. This Is Maddox Country: Georgia Governor Lester G. Maddox and the White Backlash in American Politics. Under contract with the University of South Carolina Press.
How Segregation Became Freedom: The Remaking of American Schooling after Brown. Book project in development. Working title.
Under Review & In Revision
Nichols, Joseph R. “The Rise of Segregation Academies and the Institutional Migration of White Educational Authority in the 1960s South.” History of Education Quarterly. Under review.
Shelton, Amy, and Joseph R. Nichols. “School District Boundaries and the Preservation of Segregation in Suburban St. Louis.” Missouri Historical Review. In revision.
Manuscripts In Progress
Nichols, Joseph R. “Performing White Authority: Georgia Governor Lester G. Maddox, Segregation Academies, and the Reconstruction of Massive Resistance, 1967–1971.” Journal of Southern History (target journal).
Nichols, Joseph R., Jennifer Butler, and Emily Moran. “Brooks v. Moberly, Institutional Accommodation of White Teacher Employment Rights Post-Brown, and the Limits of Federal Courts.” American Journal of Legal History (target journal).
Reports In Progress
Nichols, Joseph R., Cibby Kimbrough, Amy Shelton, Ameena Khan. “The Contemporary State of the Black Teacher Workforce in Missouri Public Schools, 2019-20 to 2024-25.” PRiME Center Education Reports.
Nichols, Joseph R., and Ameena Khan. “School Desegregation and Integration in the St. Louis Region: From Constitutional Segregation to Managed Integration.” PRiME Center Education Reports.
Research Areas
History of Education, Civil Rights, and Public Policy
School Desegregation, Educational Authority, and Governance Post-Brown
Segregation Academies, Enrollment Patterns Post-Brown, and Teacher Displacement
School District Boundaries, Metropolitan Segregation, and Suburbanization
Qualitative and Historical Research Methods
Public Scholarship
My recent scholarship includes a primer on the Brooks v. Moberly court case in the Missouri Encyclopedia; an article on the politics of motherhood, white moderation, and school desegregation in Atlanta titled “Help Our Public Education (HOPE), Concerned Motherhood, and Integrating Atlanta’s Public Schools” published in the Georgia Historical Quarterly; and a PRiME Center report examining the displacement of Black teachers in Missouri post-Brown.
My research has informed public conversations and has been featured on St. Louis Public Radio, The Gateway Podcast, KRCG, a CBS-affiliated station in Columbia and Jefferson City, the Columbia Missourian, and newspaper coverage across the state of Missouri.
I also write public-facing essays on the history of schooling, segregation, and democracy on my Substack Yesterday’s Classrooms.