Court-ordered busing and zone changes made Southern schools the least segregated by 1972

Evidence

The Court’s new forcefulness can also be seen in the measures it endorsed for remedying violations of Brown. In Green, the Court bluntly stated that the time for “deliberate speed” had passed, and that desegregation must be immediate. In Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971), it specifically endorsed various remedial measures that district court judges had used to promote desegregation, such as the alteration of student attendance zones and the busing of students to achieve integration. Although the Court cautioned that busing could not “risk the health of the children or significantly impinge on the educational process,” Swann emboldened district court judges in their aggressive efforts “to eliminate from the public schools all vestiges of state-imposed segregation.” … The effects of the efforts of Congress and the Court were apparent almost immediately: By 1972, public schools in the South and border states were the least segregated in the country. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 3015

Categorization

• XREF: Links Brown v. Board’s remedial phase to the enforcement/policymaking debate over how far judges should go to vindicate rights.
• DEFINE: Introduces two key doctrinal phrases: ‘deliberate speed’ and the remedial reach of Swann’s busing remedy.