University of Georgia

Terry College of Business
 
 

0CT. 12-14,1970. The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on student busing and racial imbalance in Southern schools. The arguments were heard by the court as part of appeals filed by attorneys representing school districts in Charlotte, N.C., and Mobile, Ala. Attorneys for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., representing Black children, argued on Oct.13 that each Black child had a constitutional right to be enrolled in a school that was not recognizably Black. The lawyers contended that any desegregation plan that did not eliminate every allBlack school should be judged as inadequate.

APRIL 20,1971. After a series of busing decisions, including a 1968 ruling that so-called free choice school desegregation plans were acceptable only if they helped abolish segregated schools, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in Swann v. Clarlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education. In its decision on a case from North Carolina, the court permitted a substantial increase in busing to desegregate schools. Reacting quickly, Congress passed numerous anti-busing amendments to legislation to legislation to circumvent the court ruling.

APRIL 29,1974. Peter Holmes, civil rights director of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, reviewed the progress of school desegregation in the nation on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the Brown v. Topeka decision and the 10th anniversary of the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Holmes told a group of Washington journalists that there were virtually no Blacks in school with White students in the eleven Southern states in 1964. By 1968, he noted, a total of 18.4 percent of the Black pupils in the South were in majority White schools. This rose to 39.1 percent in 1970 and 44.4 percent in 1972. Perhaps of greater significance, Holmes said, was the fact that the Blacks pupils in all-Black schools decreased in the South from 68 percent in 1968 to 14.1 percent in 1970, and to 9.2 percent in 1972. On the other hand, Holmes noted that while current school year figures were not available, there was likely to be an increase in segregation in Northern metropolitan school districts.

MAY 17, 1974. The 20th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision, Brown. Board of Education of Topeka, which outlawed school desegregation, was observed. In assessing the impact of the decision, the editors of the Atlanta Constitution, one of the South's leading daily newspaper, admitted that even after a generation, racial prejudice and discrimination have not been eliminated. This fact gave credence, in the editor's opinion, to the view that one cannot legislate morals.

JUNE 28,1978. In a 54 decision, the Supreme Court ordered that Allan P. Bakke, a White student, be admitted to the University of California-Davis medical school. In a case that prompted numerous so-called reverse discrimination suits, the Court said the school's affirmative action program discrimination against qualified Whites.

NOV. 29,1979. The Brown case was reopened when a group of parents, including the former Linda Brown, complained that the school system was not desegregated.

JUNE 5, 1989. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit refused to close Brown. The court said that the school board of Topeka had still failed "to fully carry out" the court's order of May 17, 19S4. The ruling reversed a decision by a lower court that could have closed the case." In its decision, the appellate court concluded that "Topeka has not sufficiently countered the effects of both the momentum of its pre-Brown segregation and its subsequent acts in the 1960s."

JUNE 26, 1990. In a lawsuit often referred to as the Adams case, a federal appeals court decides that the U.S. government can nor be sued for its failure to penalize states that violated U.S. Department of Education guidelines.

JUNE 26, 1992. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in United States v. Fordice that although college attendance was by choice and was not race-based, the state of Mississippi wrongly operated a dual system of higher education. Even though the institutions had an automatic admissions policy based on minimum test scores, and duplicated nonessential courses at historically Black colleges and universities and traditionally White institutions, their policies still mirrored the segregated system prior to Brown. The court further said that the state was underfunding its HBCUs. To comply with the ruling, the Mississippi Board of Trustees of State institutions of Higher Learning decided to close Mississippi alley State University, a predominantly Black institution, and merge Alcorn State University, also predominantly Black, with predominantly White Delta State University. his left Jackson State University as Mississippi's only Black institution receiving enhanced funding.

DECEMBER 1993 The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth circuit overturned a lower court's ruling to combine the Louisiana's 17 public educational institutions unto one system. The Court of Appeals allowed Southern University's board to remain independent. Southern produces more Black undergraduates than any other U.S. institution.