The landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education, declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. However, 70 years later, many public schools in America remain racially separate and unequal. According to a 2024 study from Stanford University and the University of Southern California, racial segregation has increased by 64% since 1988 in the nation’s 100 largest school districts.
How did this happen? The reasons are complex, but a new book argues that the 1974 Milliken v. Bradley decision is largely to blame. Author Michelle Adams, in her book “The Containment,” contends that contemporary American schools are shaped more by Milliken than by Brown. What the Brown decision promised, Milliken took away, leaving us with today’s separate but unequal system. Four of the five justices in the Milliken majority were appointed by Republican President Richard Nixon, reflecting the court’s shift to the right since Brown.
The Milliken decision limited Brown’s reach and rendered it meaningless in many Northern cities. In the South, desegregation was easier to enforce because segregation was “state-sponsored” or codified into law. Racial segregation in Northern schools was less overt.
Many Northern cities had laws banning school segregation, but racist housing practices and “White flight” (White parents fleeing cities for the suburbs) led to underfunded urban school districts that were virtually all-Black or Latino.
The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision overturned a federal judge’s ruling that had ordered the desegregation of Detroit’s public schools. Judge Stephen J. Roth had ordered suburban schools to participate in a “metropolitan plan” to integrate mostly Black city schools. This plan removed the “White flight” escape route for White parents.
Many White parents objected, arguing against “busing.” Adams says labeling the issue “busing” rather than desegregation was a key move. It allowed Whites to oppose integration without appearing openly racist.
Adams recounts how NAACP lawyers convinced Roth that racial segregation in Detroit was not accidental. It was caused by state and federal policies to “contain” Black students.
The Supreme Court struck down Roth’s decision, stating that desegregation did not require “any particular racial balance in each ‘school, grade or classroom.’” Justice Thurgood Marshall lamented in his dissent, “unless our children begin to learn together, there is little hope that our people will ever learn to live together and understand each other.”
The Milliken decision had an immediate impact. By the mid-1970s, Detroit had lost at least 51,000 White students. A 2021 study found Detroit to be the most segregated city in America. In recent decades, the nation’s public schools have steadily resegregated.
Adams’ book reads like a legal thriller, with compelling characters and dramatic courtroom moments. Roth is one of them. He used racial slurs but devised a plan to uphold Brown. Roth died of a heart attack weeks before the high court’s decision.
The Milliken case is also personal for Adams. She is a Detroit native. Her father was one of two Black men to graduate from Detroit College of Law in 1957. Her parents enrolled her in a small, private White school in the suburbs.
