Segregation in northern US schools deepened as federal desegregation enforcement targeted the South.

Evidence

As the rulings of the Supreme Court started forcing the southern and border states to desegregate their schools, the northern states were not regulated as closely and therefore their schools remained segregated. During the 1970s the northern schools, which were already the most segregated schools in the nation, became even more segregated (Orfield 1982, 2). The 1980-81 school year saw almost half of the black students in the North enrolled in schools which were 90 to 100 percent minority. The South had fewer than one quarter of their black students enrolled in such schools (Orfield 1982, 3). — Marcy Crouch, Magnet Schools and Other Means of…, 9

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to ongoing debates about de facto vs de jure segregation and why northern cities remain among the most segregated school systems in the country.
• SEED: Angle: ‘The North Desegregated Nothing’ — how federal enforcement aimed at the South let northern school segregation harden precisely in the decades it was being celebrated as solved.
• SHARE: A precise stat (1980-81: almost half of northern black students in 90-100% minority schools vs under a quarter in the South) that would land with anyone who follows education policy.