In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the doctrine of “separate but equal” that had guided public life in the southern states since the late nineteenth century. The Court declared that southern public schools could no longer segregate the races by law, yet the actual desegregation of southern schools was halting at best. Throughout much of the 1950s and 1960s, the problem of school segregation was for most Americans easily defined, if not easily solved. It was a southern issue that would end only when southern public schools began to look more like schools in the rest of the country.

By 1970, however, the “problem” of racial segregation looked very different. After sixteen years of efforts by black southerners and the lawyers and activists who supported them, southern school segregation had decreased significantly. Yet at the same time, segregation in cities across the United States, where white suburban communities often surrounded majority black inner cities, represented a pressing new problem in American race relations.

What was the next step in the nation’s pursuit of a more equitable educational system? That was the question that Americans debated in 1970, and the one you will consider in this unit.