Interviewer
Thompson, Anique
Interview Date
8-10-2011
Subject
school desegregation
Format
video
Description
Denise Best (born 1953) discusses her involvement as a plaintiff parent in the Sheff v. O’Neill school desegregation case in Hartford, Connecticut, and offers her reflections on the compromises required during the remedy phase. She describes her experience as a black woman growing up a racially diverse neighborhood in Boston, where she opposed busing for integration, and how her views changed after relocating to Hartford in 1980. She also recounts her reasons, as a mother and educator, for moving her daughter from a Hartford public school to a suburban private school, then to a suburban Catholic school. Best also discusses her connection to the Sheff lawyers through the ONE/CHANE organization, her work with the Hartford Police to eliminate drug dealing in her neighborhood, and being grandparent of children in magnet schools, her retirement from Trinity College and current role at the Christian Activities Council
Rights
Copyright: Held by Best, and shared under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license, which means that the public may freely copy, modify, and share these items for non-commercial purposes under the same terms, if the original source information is included.
photo of Denise Best (on right) with interview Anique Thompson
Recommended Citation
Denise Best, Oral history interview on Sheff v. O'Neill (with video) by Anique Thompson for the Cities, Suburbs, and Schools Project, August 10, 2011. Available from the Trinity College Digital Repository, Hartford Connecticut (http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp/).
Comments
Submitted as part of the OnTheLine web-book by Jack Dougherty and colleagues (http://OnTheLine.trincoll.edu).