Department of Justice rules schools in Cleveland, Mississippi, required to desegregate

Department of Justice rules for Mississippi school to desegregate.

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

published 16 May 2016

The Justice Department on Monday ordered the school district in Cleveland, Mississippi, to desegregate, effectively ending a five-decade-long legal battle that has been waged nearly since Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. The court concluded that "the delay in desegregation has deprived generations of students of the constitutionally-guaranteed right of an integrated education."

The court rejected two proposals put forward by the school district as unconstitutional, and decided that the only way to desegregate was to consolidate Cleveland's high schools and middle schools. But how has segregation gone on so long in the first place in Cleveland? According to The Atlantic:

Cleveland’s epic legal case began in 1965, when a group of black parents sued to stop the district from maintaining segregated schools. In the summer of 1969, the court ordered Cleveland to cease discriminating on the basis of race and eliminate the effects of the "dual school system." Though the plaintiffs won the legal victory — and black students were allowed to enroll in the all-white Cleveland High for the first time that September — roughly 1,000 white locals gathered in the streets to show their opposition to integration, and local leaders vowed to fight it.Fight they have: For the past half-century Cleveland has carried on with two sets of schools with wildly different demographics. While East Side and D.M. Smith are almost uniformly black, Cleveland High and Margaret Green Junior High, the historically white high school and middle school, have nearly even black-white splits. As a result, Cleveland has some of the most integrated — and some of the most segregated — public schools in the region. [The Atlantic]

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.

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