On Thursday, August 6, at 3 p.m. EST, Public Funds Public Schools (PFPS) will host the fourth installment in a series of webinars on issues related to private school vouchers and the campaign’s goal of ensuring public funds are used to maintain, support, and strengthen public schools.

The webinar will feature Steve Suitts in a discussion about his must-read new book, “Overturning Brown: The Segregationist Legacy of the Modern School Choice Movement,” with Dr. Sybil Jordan Hampton, to whom Suitts dedicates the book in honor of her lifelong efforts to advance equality for school children.

In Overturning Brown, Suitts examines the parallels between southern segregationist practices and the modern school choice movement, exposing the fallacy behind the latter’s so-called civil rights agenda. The book also highlights the risks facing America’s underserved youth as expanding school voucher programs divert public funds to predominantly white, often wealthy private schools.

Steve Suitts is an adjunct at the Institute for Liberal Arts of Emory University, a position he has held for over twenty years. He recently was chief strategist for Better Schools Better Jobs, an education advocacy project of the New Venture Fund. Suitts was founding director of the Alabama Civil Liberties Union from 1972 to 1977. He later served as executive director of the Southern Regional Council for 18 years and for nearly 20 years was Vice President or senior fellow at the Southern Education Foundation. Suitts is the author of more than 125 articles, monographs, and books, many focusing on issues of public education, voting rights, and the American South. His book, Hugo Black of Alabama, earned him the “Georgia Author of the Year” award for biography.

Dr. Hampton grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, and was a member of the second class of African American students entering Little Rock Central High School in 1959. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Earlham College; a Master of Science in Teaching from the University of Chicago; and a Master’s in Education and a Doctorate in Higher Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. Dr. Hampton served as the third president of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation (WRF) from 1996 to 2006, and has an extensive and lauded background of service in both K-12 and higher education. In 2005, Dr. Hampton was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame, and she is the recipient of many other prestigious honors and awards, including the Association of Black Foundation Executives (ABFE) Lifetime Achievement Award, Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site’s Soul of Humanity Award, and the Distinguished Alumni Award from Teachers College, Columbia University.

To register for “Overturning Brown: The Segregationist Legacy of the Modern School Choice Movement,” on August 6, at 3 p.m. EST, please click here.

To access previous PFPS webinars and additional tools for advocates, please click here.