Cooperative Learning: Applying Contact Theory in Desegregated Schools

The year 1984 marked the thirtieth anniversary of Brown vs Board of Education (1954) and the twentieth anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the two most important events in the dismantling of legal barriers to racial integration. This year also saw the thirtieth anniversary of one of the most important events in the study of dismantling interpersonal barriers to racial integration: the publication of Gordon Allport’s The Nature of Prejudice (1954). As the Brown decision set the tone for later judicial action against school segregation, and as the Civil Rights Act set the tone for later legislative action against segregation and discrimination in society as a whole, The Nature of Prejudice has served for thirty years as the basis for the study of intergroup relations.