School Desegregation

Desegregation in the 1970s.

By 1972 black children and white children in the South were going to school together. Much of the resistance to desegregation evident in the late 1950s and 1960s had been resolved in the South. The Department of Justice's efforts at enforcement, alongside the threat of cutting off federal funds under the 1964 Education Act, had effectively desegregated many southern schools. When desegregation moved north, however, circumstances changed. In 1970 the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare pursued fifteen desegregation cases; in 1973 it pursued one.

Moving Schoolchildren.

In 1971 the Supreme Court decided Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg. It held that the Constitution required school districts to dismantle systems that had long been segregated. The Court specific-ally held that this might mean changing attendance zones and putting children on school buses for the...

[The entire page is 920 words long]

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