The Civil Rights Project / Proyecto Derechos Civiles

This report examines a decade of resegregation from the time of theSupreme Court's 1991 "Dowell" decision, which authorized a return toneighborhood schools, even if that would create segregation, through the2001-2002 school year. It goes beyond previous reports by Harvard's CivilRights Project to study the impact of resegregation in districts whose wherecourt orders have been ended and includes new data on the presentsituation of the four communities involved in the first "Brown" decision a halfcentury ago as well as of a number of districts whose subsequent casesproduced decisive changes in the law of school desegregation. It alsoconsiders the very different desegregation levels in communities of differingsizes. Finally, it reviews the broad sweep of segregation changes nationally,regionally, and by state since the 1954 "Brown" decision. It shows that themovement that began with the Supreme Court decision has had an enduringimpact but that we are experiencing the largest backward movement in theSouth, where the court decisions and civil rights laws had produced the mostintegrated schools in the nation for three decades. Contained in theappendix are 13 color enhanced tables presenting trend data(Contains 22 tables and 81 endnotes).