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Mississippi School District Ordered to Desegregate Its Schools Mississippi School District Ordered to Desegregate Its Schools
(about 2 hours later)
A federal court has ordered a town in Mississippi to desegregate its high schools and middle schools, ending a five-decade-long legal battle over integrating black and white students.A federal court has ordered a town in Mississippi to desegregate its high schools and middle schools, ending a five-decade-long legal battle over integrating black and white students.
The United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi told the Cleveland School District to consolidate the schools after rejecting two alternatives proposed by the district, saying they were unconstitutional. The ruling by the United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, announced on Monday, means the middle school and high school programs in the Cleveland School District, in the western part of the state, will be combined for the first time in their century-long history.
“This victory creates new opportunities for the children of Cleveland to learn, play and thrive together,” Vanita Gupta, the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement published on Monday. In her decision Friday, Judge Debra M. Brown said, “Although no court order can right these wrongs, it is the duty of the district to ensure that not one more student suffers under this burden.”
The court’s ruling means the district’s middle school and high school programs will be combined for the first time in their more than century-long history. She rejected two alternatives proposed by the district as unconstitutional and ordered it to adopt a Justice Department desegregation plan, and to provide a timeline to implement it.
The decision comes six decades after the United States Supreme Court declared in Brown v. Board of Education that “separate but equal has no place” in public schools. Tuesday is the 62nd anniversary of the landmark decision. The head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, Vanita Gupta, said in a statement Monday, “This victory creates new opportunities for the children of Cleveland to learn, play and thrive together.”
The Justice Department said the district court found that the school district had operated an “inadequate dual system” in Cleveland, a Mississippi Delta town in the western part of the state with a population of about 12,000. School officials could not immediately be reached for comment on Tuesday.
“Although no court order can right these wrongs, it is the duty of the district to ensure that not one more student suffers under this burden,” the court said in its opinion. The ruling came as new government data released on Tuesday suggested that resegregation was taking place in some of the nation’s school districts, with poor, black and Hispanic students increasingly isolated from white peers.
School officials could not immediately be reached for comment. The report, released by the Government Accountability Office, showed that the percentage of public schools with high percentages of poor and black or Hispanic students grew to 16 percent in the school year ending in 2014, up from 9 percent in the school year that ended in 2001.
The Justice Department’s plan, which was approved by the court, requires the district to consolidate the virtually all-black D.M. Smith Middle School with the historically white Margaret Green Junior High School. It said 75 percent to 100 percent of those students were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, a commonly used indicator of poverty. The schools also offered fewer math, science and college preparatory courses and had higher rates of students who were held back in ninth grade, suspended or expelled.
The district must also consolidate the mostly black East Side High School with the historically white Cleveland High School, and review educational programs and identify new programs for the consolidation. Representative Bobby Scott, Democrat of Virginia, who requested the G.A.O. report in 2014 with Representative John Conyers, Democrat of Michigan, said in a statement that it confirmed the nation’s schools were still largely segregated by race and class.
Testimony given in court by white and black residents described a stigma associated with the black schools and a perception among families that white students received a better education. “What’s more troubling is that segregation in public K12 schools isn’t getting better; it’s getting worse, and getting worse quickly, with more than 20 million students of color now attending racially and socioeconomically isolated public schools,” Mr. Scott said in a statement.
The Mississippi case began with a lawsuit filed on July 24, 1965, on behalf of 131 children. The suit accused the Bolivar County Board of Education and some of its members of pursuing a policy of operating the public schools in the county on a racially segregated basis.
A motion filed in 2011 by the Justice Department illustrated the inequities of the poor and well-off in Cleveland, a Mississippi Delta town with a population of about 12,000.
Before 1969, schools on the west side of the railroad tracks that run through Cleveland were white and segregated by law. Schools on the east side of the tracks were originally black schools.
“More than 40 years later, these schools maintain their character and reputation as white schools with a student body and faculty that are disproportionately white,” a department statement said.
The court ruled that the district must consolidate the virtually all-black D.M. Smith Middle School with the historically white Margaret Green Junior High School. The district must also consolidate the mostly black East Side High School with the historically white Cleveland High School, and review educational programs and identify new programs for the consolidation.
The decision came six decades after the United States Supreme Court declared in Brown v. Board of Education that “separate but equal has no place” in public schools. But that landmark decision is still struggling to take hold in the nation’s schools on its 62nd anniversary, Tuesday.
Segregation is not just a characteristic of the Southern states. Some of the most severely segregated conditions for Latino and African-American students occur in New York, Maryland and Illinois, the Civil Rights Project said in a report on Monday.Segregation is not just a characteristic of the Southern states. Some of the most severely segregated conditions for Latino and African-American students occur in New York, Maryland and Illinois, the Civil Rights Project said in a report on Monday.
Sixty-five percent of New York’s black students attend schools that are overwhelmingly nonwhite, compared with 45 percent in Mississippi, the report shows.Sixty-five percent of New York’s black students attend schools that are overwhelmingly nonwhite, compared with 45 percent in Mississippi, the report shows.
Erica Frankenberg, an author of the report, said in a telephone interview that decades after the Brown decision, some districts have lagged in ending school segregation because ending the practice requires separate legal challenges to polices that are enforced and enacted at the local and state levels.Erica Frankenberg, an author of the report, said in a telephone interview that decades after the Brown decision, some districts have lagged in ending school segregation because ending the practice requires separate legal challenges to polices that are enforced and enacted at the local and state levels.
Some factors such as school board decisions, political opposition and discriminatory housing policies can hinder progress in districts, she said.Some factors such as school board decisions, political opposition and discriminatory housing policies can hinder progress in districts, she said.
“It is asking the perpetrators of segregation to be in charge of fixing the segregation,” Ms. Frankenberg said. She added that she believed there were several hundred legal school desegregation cases nationwide.“It is asking the perpetrators of segregation to be in charge of fixing the segregation,” Ms. Frankenberg said. She added that she believed there were several hundred legal school desegregation cases nationwide.
The Justice Department is still monitoring and enforcing 178 open federal desegregation court cases, many originating 30 or 40 years ago, the G.A.O. report noted.