1971 April 20

Supreme Court Upholds Busing to Achieve School Integration

 

In Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg, decided on this day, the Supreme Court approved the busing of students to achieve racial integration.

The Court, however, expressed its frustration with the lack of progress in school integration, 17 years after Brown v. Board of Education, decided on May 17, 1954.

Most observers believe that school busing to achieve racial integration was dealt a serious blow by the Supreme Court in 2007, with the decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1 and a companion case. Data on school attendance patterns by race indicate that racially integrated schools peaked in 1988 and has been declining ever since. May believe that America’s schools are more segregated today than they were before Brown v. Board of Education. See Jonathan Kozol’s book, The Shame of a Nation (listed below.

The Court: “Bus transportation has been an integral part of the public education system for years, and was perhaps the single most important factor in the transition from the one-room schoolhouse to the consolidated school. Eighteen million of the Nation’s public school children, approximately 39%, were transported to their schools by bus in 1969–1970 in all parts of the country . . . Thus, the remedial techniques used in the District Court’s order were within that court’s power to provide equitable relief. . . .”

Read: Jonathan Kozol, The Shame of a Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America (2005)

Learn more: James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and its Troubled Legacy (2001)

Listen to the oral arguments in the case: http://www.oyez.org/cases/1970-1979/1970/1970_281

Find a Day

Go
Abortion Rights ACLU african-americans Alice Paul anti-communism Anti-Communist Hysteria Birth Control Brown v. Board of Education Censorship CIA Civil Rights Civil Rights Act of 1964 Cold War Espionage Act FBI First Amendment Fourteenth Amendment freedom of speech Free Speech Gay Rights Hate Speech homosexuality Hoover, J. Edgar HUAC Japanese American Internment King, Dr. Martin Luther Ku Klux Klan Labor Unions Lesbian and Gay Rights Loyalty Oaths McCarthy, Sen. Joe New York Times Obscenity Police Misconduct Same-Sex Marriage Separation of Church and State Sex Discrimination Smith Act Spying Spying on Americans Vietnam War Voting Rights Voting Rights Act of 1965 War on Terror Watergate White House Women's Rights Women's Suffrage World War I World War II Relocation Camps

Topics

Tell Us What You Think

We want to hear your comments, criticisms and suggestions!