Sixty-five years after the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, the federal and judicial role in school desegregation has declined. In a more difficult political and legal environment, it has fallen on school districts to develop and implement voluntary integration plans through diversity-minded student assignment…

As the early twentieth century's restrictive social policies and poor economic conditions relegated African Americans in St. Louis, Mo. to high poverty neighborhoods, parents were forced to enroll their children in substandard segregated schools. Meanwhile the African American population increased in size from 108,765 (11.4 percent) in 1940 to…