Americans must "return to the streets" to fight for better schools and against poverty to fulfill the promise of the historic Brown v. Board of Education ruling, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said in Kansas.
"Brown was a first down, not a touchdown," Jackson said during a sermon Sunday at Topeka's Mount Carmel Missionary Baptist Church.
Monday marked the 50th anniversary of the Brown decision, in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregated schools unconstitutional.
Like other civil rights activists who gathered in Topeka over the weekend, Jackson said that while the decision represented a major legal change, the United States still falls well short of being a truly integrated — and truly just — society.
"The black-white gap is illegal," Jackson said during his Mount Carmel sermon. "But the gap between the haves and the have-nots is legal — and growing."
Jackson said the Constitution should be amended to declare that a good education is the right of every child. In an interview late Saturday night, he said adequate and fair funding for all public schools is "the next big legal and legislative challenge."