This paper discusses generally the impact of the Brown decision of 1954 on education. It presents five major "lessons" suggested by the history of school desegregation: (1) the attack on bigotry and injustice must be fought on all fronts--with votes, political interest groups, multicultural education, economic planning, and political consolidation. Litigation will not by itself solve problems with deep roots in social and economic conditions. (2) Liberty and equality are not polar opposites: equal opportunity must be seen as a goal necessary to all. (3) At present, in some ways, society is more segregated than ever: people have found ways to resegregate, not on specific racial grounds, but with results that are just as destructive to fairness and justice. (4) The costs of social change are charged always to those who are least able to afford the strain. Desegregated schools are no solution as long as society's politics, housing, incomes class structures and churches are segregated. (5) The nostalgia and resentment that follow radical social change generate the pernicious myth that there is a great, good place in the past that society must return to because it has gone too far. The inertia and resistance to the impact of Brown, on the part of active opponents as well as those who yearned for more comfortable times, was underestimated. The Brown case illustrates a first principle: equality is a good thing that needs no defense. (KH)