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NAACP educational summit to look at return of segregation

CNN Wires Staff
NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous will deliver the keynote address at a summit about segregation in schools.
NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous will deliver the keynote address at a summit about segregation in schools.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • The three-day Daisy Bates educational summit will examine resegregation in nation's schools
  • Summit named in honor of former Arkansas State Conference of the NAACP
  • NAACP president Benjamin Todd Jealous to deliver keynote address
RELATED TOPICS
  • NAACP
  • Education
  • Education Policy

(CNN) -- The nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization wants to sound the alarm on school resegregation, and is hoping a national educational summit will bring attention to what its members consider a huge problem, according to a news release from the NAACP.

The organization will meet for three days later this week in North Carolina, where the Department of Justice is planning to investigate policies relating to resegregation, the statement says.

Leaders from the group will be joined by grass-roots organizers from across the country from Thursday through Saturday for the first national NAACP summit on education in three years, the statement says.

The purpose of the meeting is to discuss comprehensive education reform with an urgent focus on resegregation in the nation's school districts, the NAACP said.

According to the organization, over two-fifths of black students attend "extremely segregated schools," up from less than one-third in 1988, which the NAACP considers the height of desegregation.

The summit was named in honor of Daisy Bates, former president of the Arkansas State Conference of the NAACP and advisor to the Little Rock Nine, the statement said. Those nine students desegregated Little Rock Central High School in 1957.

NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous is to deliver the keynote address on the first day of the summit, which will be held in Raleigh, North Carolina.