The Delaware Historical Society’s (DHS) “Trail to Desegregation” bus tours are drawing sustained community interest and renewed attention to Delaware’s role in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. The summer program brought participants into schools and historic sites across New Castle County that fed into the cases consolidated in Brown, which ultimately desegregated U.S. public schools in 1954.

Designed to ground legal history in place, the tours grew out of a University of Delaware master of arts in liberal studies capstone by DHS board member Karen Ingram (MALS, 2024). Ingram—who once worked for civil rights attorney Louis L. Redding—framed the route to place Redding’s cases in context through on-site conversation. Tour stops included Howard High School, the Claymont Community Center and Hockessin Colored School #107C, where attendees heard first-person accounts from guides Syl Woolford and James “Sonny” Knotts about life in segregated and newly integrated classrooms.

DHS leaders characterize the tours as demand-driven civic learning. “It was a fun time of communal learning,” said Hannah Grantham, director of the Mitchell Center for African American Heritage. “People came because they felt like there was more to learn,” she noted, describing dynamic exchanges among guides and participants. That appetite aligns with the program’s broader purpose: amid persistent racial and economic segregation in schools—and the rollback of longstanding desegregation orders—understanding the history of equal educational opportunity is “more important than ever.”