Frank Gold is a longtime AFT activist and a former AFT Distinguished Teacher Fellow, 1990-91. Now retired, Gold talked with American Teacher about the impact that Brown v. Board of Education had on him as a high school student in the Chicago public schools in the 1950s.

My high school experience was entirely altered by Brown v. Board of Education. Schools in Chicago were rigidly segregated when I graduated from eighth grade in 1956. The result: vastly different educational opportunities in “white” and “black” schools at the time.

In September 1956, I enrolled at my neighborhood school—the formerly all-black Marshall High. Almost overnight, with the influx of white students like myself, the program at Marshall changed. Chemistry and physics classes started up; French supplemented the only language choice of Spanish; and a schoolwide focus on preparing students for college was rekindled.

At Marshall, which was now a racially and culturally diverse school, I associated with people I probably would have never met had it not been for Brown v. Board and the integrated schools it led to. I was also exposed to dedicated teachers (many of whom proudly wore a Chicago Teachers Union pin) who guided me and our school through this transition period. I also experienced being a “minority” at Marshall; sometimes the “only one” in a meeting of class officers, at a rehearsal for the school talent show or at a table in the cafeteria.

Throughout my teaching career, I worked in a majority white suburban school, but I often focused my efforts on working with African-American students because I had some insight into what it was like to be “the only one” in an otherwise white algebra class.

Today, housing patterns in Chicago once again segregate my former high school, but I am certain my classmates’ lives were similarly enriched by their Brown-induced school experience.