Derailing Desegregation: Legal Efforts to End Racial Segregation in Higher Education Before and After Brown

Abstract

Preceded by recent affirmative action rulings, the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education(1954) came during a time of legal retreat away from addressing racial issues. Rather than resolve America's race problems, the history and modern structure of Brown and other higher education desegregation cases indicates that the courts are no more prepared to adequately confront social inequalities, which are propagated and manipulated by race than during the years of de jure segregation. Focusing on the years leading up to and after the Brown decision, this study looks at the impact this case had on attempts to adjudicate changes to segregation policies affecting higher education. Essentially, this article seeks to demonstrate that contemporary judicial opinions affecting collegiate desegregation both result from and have made little progress since the initial publication of Brown.