ADVERTISEMENT Regrettably, the infrastructure aspect of Brown II has faded from contemporary discussion. Forty years later, President Clinton famously told Congress, “we cannot expect our children to raise themselves up in schools that are literally falling down.” A generation later, the age and decrepit dysfunction of the average school facility is worse. “Education is the great equalizer,” declared Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But in 1956, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower and a Democratic Congress were only interested in passing the Federal Highway Act promising “41,000 miles of interstate highways.” The federal government would pay 90 percent of the cost. Today, there are upwards of 41,000 aging school facilities needing full or nearly complete renovation. As the 2020 Democratic Platform suggests, crumbling facilities are disproportionately found in minority urban neighborhoods and white rural counties.