This controversial remedy provoked huge outcries from parents and legislators, Democrats and Republicans, northerners and southerners. As a result, some lower courts began fashioning desegregation decrees that required busing between suburbs and cities. In many urban areas, however, this was too little, too late: integrating urban schools was becoming increasingly difficult by the late 1960s and early 1970s because there were so few white students left in city school systems. New Kent County, that the time for 'all deliberate speed' had come to end and that school districts had to actually integrate their schools.

The Supreme Court finally lost its patience in 1968, when it declared in Green v. For more than a decade after Brown, southern states and school districts did little to desegregate their schools, and the Court tolerated this foot dragging and in some ways encouraged it by proclaiming, ambiguously, that desegregation had to occur with 'all deliberate speed.' All the while, metropolitan areas were changing rapidly, with middle-income whites leaving cities in droves and moving to all-white suburbs, which often excluded minority residents through a host of devices intentionally designed to promote housing segregation. This is a bit ironic because to understand the impact of Brown, it is crucial to understand Milliken and, indeed, the latter decision has in many ways had a more lasting impact on education than Brown.īrown sought to tie the fates of white and black students together by declaring that 'separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,' but the promise of Brown has never fully been realized. This year also marks the 40th anniversary of another desegregation decision, Milliken v. Board of Education, a case which is known around the world, even if it remains somewhat poorly understood. Today marks the 60th anniversary of Brown v. This article originally appeared in the Huffington Post.

Brown v board of education impact