“Integration was a Solution, but Integration does not Address Quality Education”: A Conversation about School Desegregation with Dr. Michael A. Middleton

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Dr. Michael A. Middleton is Deputy Chancellor of the University of Missouri–Columbia. He is an expert in civil rights and employment discrimination and served as lead counsel for plaintiffs in the St. Louis metropolitan school desegregation litigation. Dr. Middleton previously served as director of the St. Louis District Office of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). He was also an associate general counsel at the EEOC in Washington, DC for three years. During this time, he managed the commission's national litigation program and supervised 250 attorneys at 22 district offices in federal court litigation activities. He has held several other high-level government positions, including deputy assistant secretary of education at the U.S. Department of Education; director of the Office of Systemic Programs at the EEOC; and assistant deputy director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. As deputy chief counsel and director of the Government Employment Project for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in the early 1970s, Middleton handled civil rights litigation focusing on voting rights and government employment throughout the South. He began his career as a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, where he actively litigated several major employment discrimination cases in the federal courts across the country. On February 15, 2013, we sat down with Dr. Middleton to discuss the history, current status, and future of school desegregation.