Becoming Less Separate: School Desegregation, Justice Department Enforcement, and the Pursuit of Unitary Status

For almost a century following the end of the Civil War, many state and local governments, particularly in the South but not exclusively so, operated a crippling systemofstate-sponsored segregation. The nation’s elementary and secondary school students were most affected by these policies. It was not until 1954, inthe decisionof Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), that theSupreme Court finally ruledthat de jureracial discrimination in education was unconstitutional.
To address the damage caused by the intentional segregation of schools, the Court sanctioned an
extraordinary level of federal intervention. Many of those in the affectedareas reacted to the process of integration with massive resistance,which sometimes included outright violence.
In response to continued resistance, Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of1964, which authorized the Department ofJustice to take anactive role inenforcing anti-discrimination laws.The Act allowed the Department of Justice to initiate or intervene in lawsuits to desegregate schools.
In addition, Title VI of the Act made school districts that engage in racial discrimination ineligible for
federal funding. This provision, when combined withthe Elementary and Secondary Education Act of
1965, (which provides financial assistance to schools serving areas with concentrations of children from low incomefamilies),exerteda substantial influence on school districts as federal funding for education increased.
In recognition of the continued resistance to desegregation, the Supreme Court in the decision of Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, 391 U.S. 430 (1968), established specific standards by which desegregation efforts should be judged. The Court established that a school system that successfully transitioned from a segregated, racially dual system to an integrated one would be classified as “unitary.”
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, judicial oversight continued to grow. Given the extent of resistance, this extraordinary federal intervention was both necessary and unavoidable.But it was not without costs. By its nature, judicial supervision supplanted the decisions of locally elected officials and professional educators with those of an unelected judge without special training or expertise in education policy.
By the 1990s, many court orders had been in placefor decades, andthe state-sponsored schemes of segregation had been addressed. It was at this point in time thatthe Supreme Court acknowledged the historical importance of local elected control over elementary and secondary schools and held that federal judicial supervision should end when the effects of past intentional discrimination are remedied.
To that end,the Court clarified the means by which school districts might obtain unitary status and
receive relief from judicial oversight. These cases were Board of Education of Oklahoma City Public
Schools v. Dowell, 498 U.S. 237 (1991), and Freeman v. Pitts, 503 U.S. 467 (1992). In these decisions, the Court held that the award of unitary status is appropriate when a school district demonstrates that it has complied with the court’s desegregation order for a reasonable period of time and has exhibited a good faith commitment to the constitutional principles Brown established.