U.S. Supreme Court decisions and desegregation in the South
Peavy, Martha Ann
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This study examined the relevant legal history and the current legal status of desegregation in the Southern United States. Beginning with the Dred Scot case and continuing to the present, this study examined Southern Blacks’ quest for equal access to a quality education through legal challenges before the United States Supreme Court. U.S. Supreme Court decisions on challenges to the denial of equal access to education and an adequate legal remedy were also analyzed. The study produced a chronology of U.S. Supreme Court cases effectuating desegregation in the South and relevant scholarly commentaries concerning these decisions of the high Court. This study found that: 1) three cases in the nineteenth century had a significant impact on segregation, but only one pertained directly to education; 2) segregation in public schools based on color was struck down in an unanimous decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education (1954); 3) cases immediately following the first Brown case up until 1967 involved rulings by the high Court forbidding tactics that were designed for the specific purpose of delaying desegregation; 4) beginning in 1968 and ending in 1973 legal guidelines were given on implementing desegregation by the U.S. Supreme Court; 5) the high Court began to back away from expanding desegregation from 1974 until 1979; and 6) three recent cases indicate that the U.S. Supreme Court has withdrawn from active involvement in desegregating schools The study concluded that a review of the cases concerning school desegregation in the South shows that the U.S. Supreme Court followed a bell shaped curve of initial noninvolvement, to increasing involvement, to direct and active involvement with Brown through Swann, and then began backing away from involvement in Milliken, further decreasing involvement, and is now approaching non-involvement again. In his recent study on resegregation, Orfield (2004) determined that even though the 1954 Brown decision had an enduring impact on desegregation of public schools, the South is experiencing the largest backward movement in the nation. Many believed that Brown would cure the forces that produced segregation and inequality. But the South, which had the most integrated schools in the U.S. for three decades, is now experiencing a major increase in resegregation.