Congress, not the Court alone, dismantled Southern school segregation

Evidence

In 1954, 21 states and the District of Columbia, enrolling more than 70 percent of the African American students in the United States, either required racial segregation in their schools or permitted it by local option. Brown succeeded in desegregating public schools in Northern and border states that had maintained dual school systems. But a decade after Brown, 99 percent of African American students in the South still attended segregated schools. Congressional intervention prompted the desegregation of Southern schools in the late 1960s and early 1970s, so that by 1972, 91 percent of black students in the South were attending integrated schools. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 3038

Categorization

• XREF: Pairs with the chapter’s broader theme of judicial capacity limits — courts announce rights, but legislative enforcement delivers compliance.
• SEED: Article angle: ‘Brown didn’t desegregate the South — the 1964 Civil Rights Act did,’ tracing the decade of near-total noncompliance between the ruling and congressional intervention.