Conditional federal education funding coerced Southern districts into complying with desegregation orders.

Evidence

Title VI of the Act prohibited the dispersal of federal funds to units of government, including school districts, that practiced racial discrimination. The impact of this provision increased with the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 1965. ESEA established a program of federal financial aid to school districts, and, given the poverty in many Southern states, their districts stood to benefit from the aid program. However, if a school district refused to desegregate, its federal funds could be cut off. Thus, if the Civil Rights Act proffered the stick of federal enforcement, ESEA offered the carrot of federal inducements. By 1969, federal funds made up between 11 and 21 percent of state budgets for public schools in the Southern states. Southern school districts, therefore, could ill afford to defy court orders to desegregate without jeopardizing the flow of federal dollars on which they had become dependent. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 3007

Categorization

• SHARE: The specific 11–21 percent figure is the kind of concrete lever detail a policy or civil-rights-history person would love.