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''Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education'', 402 U.S. 1 (1971), was a
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United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
case dealing with the
busing Race-integration busing in the United States (also known simply as busing, Integrated busing or by its critics as forced busing) was the practice of assigning and transporting students to schools within or outside their local school districts in ...
of students to promote integration in public schools. The Court held that busing was an appropriate remedy for the problem of racial imbalance in schools, even when the imbalance resulted from the selection of students based on geographic proximity to the school rather than from deliberate assignment based on race. This was done to ensure the schools would be "properly" integrated and that all students would receive equal educational opportunities regardless of their race. Judge
John J. Parker John Johnston Parker (November 20, 1885 – March 17, 1958) was an American politician and United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He was an unsuccessful nominee for associate justice of the Unite ...
of the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (in case citations, 4th Cir.) is a federal court located in Richmond, Virginia, with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts: * District of Maryland ...
interpreted the ''
Brown v. Board of Education ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...
'' case as a charge not to segregate rather than an order to integrate. In 1963, the Court ruled in ''McNeese v. Board of Education and Goss v. Board of Education'' in favor of integration, and showed impatience with efforts to end segregation. In 1968 the Warren Court ruled in '' Green v. County School Board'' that
freedom of choice Freedom of choice describes an individual's wikt:opportunity, opportunity and autonomy to perform an action selected from at least two available options, unconstrained by external parties. In politics In the abortion debate, for example, the te ...
plans were insufficient to eliminate
segregation Segregation may refer to: Separation of people * Geographical segregation, rates of two or more populations which are not homogenous throughout a defined space * School segregation * Housing segregation * Racial segregation, separation of humans ...
; thus, it was necessary to take proactive steps to integrate schools. In ''United States v. Montgomery County Board of Education'' (1969), Judge Frank Johnson's desegregation order for teachers was upheld, allowing an approximate ratio of the races to be established by a district judge.


Background

North Carolina was one of the more moderate Southern states, and its resistance to integration was much weaker than in most other areas of the
South South is one of the cardinal directions or compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Proto-Germanic ''*sunþa ...
. After ''Brown'', it had ended segregation with a school assignment plan based on neighborhoods that was approved by the Court. However, when Charlotte consolidated school districts from the city itself with a surrounding area totaling , the majority of black students (who lived in central Charlotte) still attended mostly black schools as compared with majority white schools further outside the city.


Legal proceedings

The
NAACP Legal Defense Fund The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (NAACP LDF, the Legal Defense Fund, or LDF) is a leading United States civil rights organization and law firm based in New York City. LDF is wholly independent and separate from the NAACP. Alth ...
brought the Swann case on behalf of six-year-old James Swann and nine other families, with Julius L. Chambers presenting the case. Swann was chosen because his father was a theology professor, and was thus unlikely to be economically burdened by local retaliation. In 1965, Judge J. Braxton Craven decided ''Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education'' in favor of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, because there was no requirement in the Constitution to act purposely to increase racial mixing. After the Green ruling, the Swann case was filed again, and this time taken by Judge
James Bryan McMillan James Bryan McMillan (December 19, 1916 – March 4, 1995) was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina. Education and career Born in Goldsboro, North Carolina, McMillan rec ...
as his first important case on the federal bench. McMillan had at one point been a public opponent of busing to integrate schools, but when the case was presented to him he said that the facts outweighed his feelings, and busing was the only way to fulfill the constitutional requirement of desegregation. Experts from Rhode Island College were brought in for the Plaintiff's side to judge the effectiveness of the school board's new plan. From April to November 1969, McMillan repeatedly ordered the board to revise the plan. The Board eventually submitted a plan rezoning neighborhoods into pie-shaped wedges, where blacks living in the center of Charlotte would be divided up and distributed to outlying, formerly white high schools. The school board's plan required busing and would achieve a black population of 2-36% in all ten of the high schools. Due to the greater number of elementary schools, elaborate gerrymandering was required and would achieve greater integration, but would leave more than half of black elementary students at majority-black schools. The Court rejected the Board's plan in favor of outsider Dr. John Finger's plan. The Finger Plan required busing of an additional 300 black students, established "satellite zones" and required pairing and grouping techniques to achieve even greater integration. As a consequence, McMillan became a local pariah. Chambers' home, office and car were bombed when he first took up the case. When the case was appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, the case was heard ''en banc'' by six of the seven judges sitting on the court. The seventh judge Judge J. Braxton Craven, recused himself due to him being the original trial court judge. The opinion was 3-2-1 that the restructured busing orders should be affirmed for older students, but that it be remanded for those of elementary school age. Two dissenters would have affirmed the whole decision, while one would reverse McMillan's ruling in its entirety. McMillan decided to follow his original plan for elementary school students after the case was remanded to him.


Swann before the Supreme Court

Justice Douglas had previously been strongly opposed to busing. The Court was urged to begin their term early to hear the case, but decided to wait until the first day of their new term to begin. Despite his relative youth and inexperience, Julius Chambers argued the case, because of his intimate knowledge of the facts involved.
Erwin Griswold Erwin Nathaniel Griswold (; July 14, 1904 – November 19, 1994) was an American appellate attorney who argued many cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Griswold served as Solicitor General of the United States (1967–1973) under Presidents Lynd ...
, the Solicitor General of the United States, represented the federal government, advocating Nixon's “go-slow” policy. Though no official vote was taken, Chief Justice Burger and Justice Black wanted to reverse McMillan's order, while Justices Douglas, Harlan, Brennan, and Marshall wanted a strong affirmation of the order; Justices Stewart, White, and Blackmun did not express a strong feeling either way. Douglas, Brennan, and Marshall were quite liberal, but Harlan was usually conservative. When Burger circulated his very grudging affirmation of McMillan that limited future action and action in other areas by the Court, he met strong resistance. Douglas, Harlan, Brennan, and Marshall all demanded revisions and circulated suggestions for alternate drafts. Justice Stewart also reacted strongly after carefully considering the facts of the case, and wrote a “dissent” that would have been the opinion of the court without revisions of Burger's drafts. Burger revised the opinion five times, each time making a stronger affirmation of McMillan and incorporating the language of Harlan, Brennan, Stewart, and others into it. After the fifth draft, Justice Black threatened a dissent if the opinion was made any stronger an affirmation, and so a sixth and final draft was created that was close to what Justice Stewart had composed after the first conference. The final opinion was 9-0 affirming McMillan's order. The decision led to the widespread use of busing to end segregation by federal judges in the South.


Timeline of the case being overturned

When the courts mandated that busing should occur to desegregate the schools, they also noted that one day when the school system was thought to be unitary, busing would end and the school board would be able to come up with a new plan which would best suit the education of students in Charlotte-Mecklenburg. After busing was enforced in 1971, throughout the 1970s and the 1980s, Charlotte was known across the nation as the “city that made desegregation work.” It paved the way for many different school systems to use the busing plan to force integration in the school systems.Godwin, R.K., Leland, S.M., Baxter, A.D., and Southworth, S. (2006). ''Sinking Swann: Public School Choice and the Resegregation of Charlotte’s Public Schools.'' Review of Policy Research, 23(5), 983-997. However, due to the booming economy of the city in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Charlotte experienced a rapid immigration from the Northeast and the Midwest, which resulted in a decline of the acceptance of busing. In 1992, in response to these complaints, CMS created a managed choice plan to reduce the number of students being bused. This new choice plan revolved around magnet schools, making one-third of the schools in Charlotte-Mecklenburg either magnets or partial magnets, and each magnet had a quota of black and white students that were allowed to attend. But this didn't please many white families who were denied entrance into magnet schools that had fulfilled their quotas. In 1997, a parent, William Capacchione, sued the school system when his daughter was denied entrance into a magnet school for the second time based on her race. While the school system opposed the end of busing, Judge Robert D. Potter declared the mandate of a unitary system had been met and lifted the court order on mandatory busing by race or ethnicity. This ruling was upheld by the appeals court in Richmond, Virginia in 2000 and after the final appeal was declined to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, federal order of busing was ended in Charlotte-Mecklenburg and it was left in the hands of the city school board to decide how to redo the assignment policy for school attendance.Walsh, M. (2002). ''High Court Closes Historic Desegregation Case.'' Education Week, 21(32), 31-33. The new assignment policy which was adopted in the fall of 2002 was known as the “School Choice Plan.” This new choice plan divided the city into four large attendance zones based on neighborhoods. Students were allowed to choose to stay at their neighborhood "home school," or they could rank their top three choices of any other school in CMS; however they would only receive free transportation to their home school or any of the magnet schools in the district. If families chose their home school as their first choice, they were guaranteed that school; otherwise they were entered into a lottery that gave available spaces in overenrolled schools. If people did not choose a school, they were immediately placed into their home school. After creating a variety of programs to inform families about the new plan, over 95% of the families in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system submitted choices for the new school year.


See also

*
List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 402 This is a list of all United States Supreme Court cases from volume 402 of the ''United States Reports The ''United States Reports'' () are the official record ( law reports) of the Supreme Court of the United States. They include rulings, ord ...


References


External links

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Oral History Interview with Arthur Griffin
fro
Oral Histories of the American South
{{DEFAULTSORT:Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board Of Education United States Supreme Court cases of the Burger Court United States equal protection case law United States school desegregation case law Education in Charlotte, North Carolina History of civil rights in the United States Legal history of North Carolina United States Supreme Court cases