Path to desegregation

Published: Sunday, Feb. 29 2004 12:00 a.m. MST

Summary

Timeline of major events related to desegregation of U.S. public Some milestones regarding the segregation and desegregation of public schools in the United States:

Timeline of major events related to desegregation of U.S. public

Some milestones regarding the segregation and desegregation of public schools in the United States:

1896: The U.S. Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson, upholds Louisiana law requiring railroads to provide "equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races." The ruling becomes the legal underpinning for widespread racial segregation in public schools.

1899: In the first school segregation case to reach the Supreme Court, the justices tolerate unequal treatment — refusing to force Augusta, Ga., to close a high school for whites until it reopened a black school.

1927: The Supreme Court allows a Mississippi district to require a Chinese-American girl to attend segregated black school instead of school for whites.

1950: In precursor to the end of state-sanctioned segregation, the Supreme Court rejects rules at the University of Oklahoma that physically segregate a black student from whites in a graduate education program.

1954: In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the Supreme Court unanimously declares that separating public school students by race violates black children's constitutional rights.

1957: Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus orders state National Guard to keep nine black students from enrolling at Little Rock's Central High School.

A showdown ensues — President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends in 1,000 members of Army's 101st Airborne Division to escort students into the school.

• 1962: James Meredith becomes first black man to enroll at University of Mississippi; campus erupts in rioting.

• 1963: The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech focuses national attention on civil rights.

• 1964: The Civil Rights Act is signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, outlawing the segregation of restaurants, lodging and other public facilities.

• 1968: King assassinated. Supreme Court develops criteria for determining if school districts have met their desegregation obligations.

• 1971: In Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, the Supreme Court authorizes mandatory busing, redrawn attendance zones, and the limited use of quotas to be used in desegregation.

• 1974: U.S. District Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. orders students bused across Boston school district to achieve racial balance, touching off violent protests and making long-lasting change in schools' makeup.

• 1991: Supreme Court reaffirms notion that desegregation orders were supposed to be temporary, saying in an Oklahoma City case that federal judges should lift such decrees if districts have complied with them in good faith and remedied discrimination "as far as practicable."

• 1995: Supreme Court strikes down magnet school plan in Kansas City, making it harder for federal judges to order city school desegregation plans designed to attract white students from the suburbs.

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