On January 20, 2009, essentially 200 years after the enactment of the embargo against the slave trade, 40 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Barack Hussein Obama became the 44th President of the United States of America. Using the one drop rule for racial designation which has prevailed in the USA for most of its history,…

During 1968 the board of education of Kalamazoo, Michigan appointed a committee on desegregation and charged the group with developing a master plan with target dates for desegregating all levels of the public school system. The committee recommended a detailed three page program that was to lead to total desegregation of local schools by…

In 1969 Ossining had been singled out as 1 of 54 target segregated districts in New York by a state study group known as the Fleischmann Commission. The first steps to desegregate the Ossining elementary schools occurred shortly after the state board of education wrote the school department pointing out the racial imbalance in the elementary…

This report examines the desegregation activities of the Santa Barbara school district focusing on the elementary schools. In 1968 the superintendent requested an onsite review study of Santa Barbara's elementary and high school districts to determine ethnic and racial balance in student enrollments. It was found that 9 of the elementary school…

Notes that Houston's voluntary approach to desegregation, including the magnet schools, seems to be meeting with both judicial and public approval. (Author/AM)

This is a report on school desegregation in Bogalusa, Louisiana. This school district was selected for study because it offered the unique opportunity to study school desegregation in a rural setting. In the past, Bogalusa operated a dual system of education. In 1965, black parents filed a lawsuit on behalf of their children; Jenkins V. Bogalusa…

The Milwaukee School System responded to a court finding of segregation by structuring a program of community involvement to help in the task of planning and implementing school desegregation. The city-wide planning group came to be called the Committee of 100. The central thesis of this paper is that the quality of community involvement is not…

This is a report on school desegregation in Corpus Christi, Texas. It discusses in depth the historical and legal basis for school desegregation in Corpus Christi with respect to the litigative processes underlying the issue of school desegregation. This report carefully describes the events leading up to the landmark Cisneros v. Corpus Christi…

The fourth year of federal court desegregation (1977-78) promised stability and continuity to the Boston public schools. Instead it brought confusion, frustration and anger, although there have been no serious disruptions inside the schools for the first time since desegregation began in 1974. (Author/AM)

An important component of the school desegregation methods of Lansing, Michigan, was the Cluster Plan, which is described and evaluated in this article. (Author/AM)

It is noted that Dallas' success with the busing of some children for the purpose of integration is because only some students from some districts are bused for only a few years. (Author/AM)

This report by the United States Commission on Civil Rights focuses on the desegregation of metropolitan schools. It begins by summarizing the research on the causes of racial isolation in metropolitan areas, and connects this research to issues raised in Milliken V. Bradley. In this case, the Supreme Court noted that legal decisions affecting…

The Corpus Christi Independent School District is undergoing the third phase of its integration order. Officials, who once talked of appealing the remedies as soon as the final phase was ordered, will not do so. The death of the unpopular computer grid plan defused the major complaints. (Author/AM)

The Flint public school system, Michigan's second largest, has adopted an aggressive magnet school plan but the project has fallen short of ending segregation in the city's classrooms. (Author/AM)

Beginning with the Brown vs. Topeka'' case of 1954 and continuing to the Equal Educational Opportunity bill of 1972, the author traces a series of court cases, laws, pronouncements and research studies concerning educational opportunity and the implications of the busing concept for desegregation and integration. (Author/JM)