Milton Friedman and Racialized School Choice Ideology, 1945–1960

Milton Friedman networked with a libertarian elite that stretched far outside the ivory tower. He influenced conservativism in the mid-twentieth century in the process, fusing academic theories with the work of the social and political stalwarts of the conservative movement including William Buckley, the conservative founder of the National Review and host of the popular television show “Firing Line,” Leon Dure, the influential news editor in Virginia and propagator of “freedom of choice” plans, and Senator Barry Goldwater, the far-right candidate who helped reshape and rebrand the Republican Party, and Friedman’s own public television program “Free to Choose” (Leon Dure to Milton Friedman 1962; Barry Goldwater to Milton Friedman 1961; Milton Friedman to William Buckley 1961; MacLean 2017). As an economist at the University of Chicago, Milton Friedman informed the conservative movement overall, but was also a keen spokesperson for a new “right” in education that formed the basis for a contested school choice movement in the aftermath of the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision. Demands for a right to choose were also part of a larger rightward political shift. Articulating a right to choose was controversial after the Brown decision because emergent choice ideologies were on the surface objective or neutral regarding segregation and thus conflicted with prevailing ideologies of the Black freedom struggle. Additionally, Friedman hypothesized that choice could flourish in the city of Chicago in ways that benefitted everyone, but the racialized sociopolitical context of the city illuminates the limitations of his theoretical marketplace during the 1950s and 1960s.