A Tale of Two Cities: Paradoxes and Promises of School Integration

Abstract

When asked last year to give a talk about school integration in Detroit, I couldn’t help thinking of what was arguably the worst possible Supreme Court decision on the subject—Milliken versus Bradley in 1974. Milliken denoted an important stage in the Court’s journey—responding to changing political nuances and Nixon appointments to the bench—to retreating on the commitment to desegregation articulated in Brown v. Board 20 years back. In Milliken, the Court contributed to white flight from many cities and led to the decline in desegregated schools that we are still experiencing today by ruling that it was not necessary or required for a district to create diverse schools across the city limits even with neighboring suburbs. The decision also evinced the now well-known dissent from Thurgood Marshall, an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court at this point, although he was a key attorney decades back arguing the case that led to victory in Brown v. Board. His quote, “Unless our children begin to learn together, then there is little hope that our people will ever learn to live together” emerged as a rallying cry for many organizations supporting school integration, including the project I direct at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.