https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...te-62-years-after-brown-v-board-of-education/
A federal judge has ordered a school district in the Mississippi Delta to desegregate its middle and high schools, capping a legal battle that has dragged on for more than five decades.
The Cleveland School District is divided by railroad tracks that separate white families, who largely live west of the tracks, from black families, who largely live to the east. Its secondary schools reflect that division: There is one all-black middle school, for example, and one all-black high school. Just over a mile away are a historically white middle school and high school.
As the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi put it, Cleveland — a town of 12,000 — has been running an illegal dual system for its black and white children, failing year after year to reach the “greatest degree of desegregation possible.”
Now Cleveland must consolidate its schools, integrating all its students into one middle school and one high school.
The order, written by Judge Debra M. Brown and released late Friday, comes 62 years after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling on school desegregation in Brown v. Board of Education. And it comes a half-century after Cleveland families first sued the district for continuing to operate racially segregated schools.
[First school in Va. to desegregate marks anniversary of integration]
“The delay in desegregation has deprived generations of students of the constitutionally-guaranteed right of an integrated education,” Brown wrote. “Although no court order can right these wrongs, it is the duty of the district to ensure that not one more student suffers under this burden.”
District officials had argued that the Justice Department’s consolidation plan would trigger white flight, making it all the more difficult to achieve integration. They had put forth two alternative plans that would have kept the two high schools open, relying on choice and magnet programs to try to create diversity.
The court found both of those plans unconstitutional. The district had already tried to use choice as an engine for integration, and it hadn’t worked at the secondary level.
“This decision serves as a reminder to districts that delaying desegregation obligations is both unacceptable and unconstitutional,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, in a statement. “The court’s ruling will result in the immediate and effective desegregation of the district’s middle school and high school program for the first time in the district’s more than century-long history.”
A federal judge has ordered a school district in the Mississippi Delta to desegregate its middle and high schools, capping a legal battle that has dragged on for more than five decades.
The Cleveland School District is divided by railroad tracks that separate white families, who largely live west of the tracks, from black families, who largely live to the east. Its secondary schools reflect that division: There is one all-black middle school, for example, and one all-black high school. Just over a mile away are a historically white middle school and high school.
As the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi put it, Cleveland — a town of 12,000 — has been running an illegal dual system for its black and white children, failing year after year to reach the “greatest degree of desegregation possible.”
Now Cleveland must consolidate its schools, integrating all its students into one middle school and one high school.
The order, written by Judge Debra M. Brown and released late Friday, comes 62 years after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling on school desegregation in Brown v. Board of Education. And it comes a half-century after Cleveland families first sued the district for continuing to operate racially segregated schools.
[First school in Va. to desegregate marks anniversary of integration]
“The delay in desegregation has deprived generations of students of the constitutionally-guaranteed right of an integrated education,” Brown wrote. “Although no court order can right these wrongs, it is the duty of the district to ensure that not one more student suffers under this burden.”
District officials had argued that the Justice Department’s consolidation plan would trigger white flight, making it all the more difficult to achieve integration. They had put forth two alternative plans that would have kept the two high schools open, relying on choice and magnet programs to try to create diversity.
The court found both of those plans unconstitutional. The district had already tried to use choice as an engine for integration, and it hadn’t worked at the secondary level.
“This decision serves as a reminder to districts that delaying desegregation obligations is both unacceptable and unconstitutional,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, in a statement. “The court’s ruling will result in the immediate and effective desegregation of the district’s middle school and high school program for the first time in the district’s more than century-long history.”
