Your Children Are Very Greatly in Danger

In Your Children Are Very Greatly in Danger, veteran journalist Justin Murphy argues that Rochester's educational disparities stem from historical and ongoing racial segregation. Education reform alone cannot resolve racial inequity—cities like Rochester must first dismantle segregation.

Through interviews and documents, Murphy s how discriminatory policies and personal prejudice shaped the region's segregated educational system. Alongside this troubling history, he highlights the fight for integration, from Frederick Douglass's advocacy in the 1850s to student activism inspired by Black Lives Matter in the 2010s.

Murphy underscores how numerous failed efforts to uphold Brown v. Board of Education demonstrate that desegregation and integration remain the best opportunities to improve educational and economic outcomes for children of color. In Rochester, that opportunity has been lost, leading to persistently poor academic results.

Your Children Are Very Greatly in Danger offers both historical and contemporary analysis, showing how northern cities must confront their past to build a more equitable future.

Justin Murphy is the education reporter at the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, New York.

His work is a must-read for anyone interested in school integration in general and the history of school integration in Rochester, New York, in particular.

Everyone should read Justin Murphy's Your Children Are Very Greatly in Danger.

Your Children Are Very Greatly in Danger is one important effort to foster crucial change.

Murphy's work is a must-read for anyone interested in school integration in general and the history of school integration in Rochester, New York, in particular.

Christine L. Ridarsky, Rochester City Historian:

Justin Murphy demonstrates why schools in Rochester are failing Black and Brown children.

Matthew F. Delmont, author of Why Busing Failed :

Murphy brings to light the complex and contentious issues of school desegregation and educational equality in Rochester, New York. From Frederick Douglass in the nineteenth century to Black parents in the Civil Rights era, Murphy details generations of Black activism. This is a local story with national implications.

Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA:

In our dangerously polarized society, a viable future depends on educating all children fairly, preparing them to live and work together in a society without a racial majority. Justin Murphy's carefully documented, quietly passionate book about generations of segregation and failure in Rochester's deeply unequal schools calls us start now on building a real path toward integration.

Ansley T. Erickson, author of Making the Unequal Metropolis:

Murphy adeptly analyzes school segregation in the city of Rochester by carefully blending sources from the era of the Great Migration up to the twenty-first century. Your Children Are Very Greatly in Danger is a resource to local educators, community members, and students seeking to understand and improve Rochester schools.

Joan Coles Howard, former editor of The Frederick Douglass Voice:

Everyone should read Justin Murphy's Your Children Are Very Greatly in Danger. The book should be read far and wide because it provides a better understanding of the historical realities that have brought us to where we are today. The issues addressed here are American issues and not confined to Rochester.