April 20 - BlackFacts Black History Minute

BlackFacts.com: Learn/Teach/Create Black History

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 20.

The United States Supreme Court upheld the use of busing to achieve racial desegregation in schools.

The Burger Court in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education ruled that the school district must achieve racial balance even if it meant redrawing school boundaries and the use of busing as a legal tool.

In 1954, in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation of schools was unconstitutional.

However, many neighborhood schools remained segregated due to the demographics of a city or town.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, for example, in the mid-1960s less than 5 percent of African American children attended integrated schools. Indeed, busing was used by white officials to maintain segregation.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), on behalf of the parents of a six-year-old child, sued the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district to allow their son to attend Seversville Elementary School.

James McMillan, the federal district judge in the case, ruled in favor of the family and oversaw the implementation of a busing strategy that integrated the district’s schools. McMillan’s decision was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld it.

The busing strategy was adopted elsewhere in the United States and played an instrumental role in integrating U.S. public schools.

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