The Legal Struggle to Integrate Schools in the North

Abstract

The struggle to integrate public schools in the North has been conducted largely in the federal courts. While the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education and its progeny have clearly outlawed "de jure" or state-imposed school segregation, the Supreme Court has not yet clarified whether its constitutional proscription extends to racial imbalance which results from the application of neighborhood school principles to racially imbalanced residential areas— so-called "de facto" segregation. In the early phase of northern litigation, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) lawyers who led the legal struggle sought, largely unsuccessfully, to vindicate their theory that racial imbalance in the public schools, whether caused directly by state officials or not, unconstitutionally deprived black children of equal educational opportunity. Recently, the NAACP has changed its strategy and has attempted to prove in every case that school officials have taken at least some intentionally discriminatory actions which have helped isolate black children in black schools, and its lawyers have managed to convince a more sympathetic judiciary to grant comprehensive integration relief.