No, Black Americans were not better off prior to forced integration. Schools were horribly underfunded. But a better strategy would have been to properly fund Black schools, and if integration happened on its own, I think that would have been better for the students well being. They assumed Black kids would get better opportunities going to White schools but in reality, White parents took their kids out of these schools and now Black schools are just as underfunded as before. We're back to where we started.