Policemen keep a mob back as James Meredith, a Black student trying to enroll at the University of Mississippi, is driven away after being refused admittance to the all-white university in Oxford on Sept. 25, 1962.
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The Brown v. Board of Education case, which resulted in the Supreme Court outlawing school segregation, originally started in Clarendon County, South Carolina.
Court-ordered desegregation has happened in the U.S. as recently as 2015, when a federal judge issued a desegregation order to the Cleveland, Miss., school district.
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President Joe Biden has urged lawmakers to act over abortion rights following the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. But is there a route to legislation?
A U.S. Federal Marshal escorts Gail Etienne to her first day of school on Nov. 14, 1960.
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In the early 1960s, the McDonogh 19 school was the site of fierce opposition to racial integration. The building is now owned by one of the Black girls who first integrated the school.
School funding inequities persist along racial and economic lines.
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Brown v. Board didn’t overrule ‘separate-but-equal’ but it had that end. A law scholar explains how there is a lesson there for conservatives on today’s Court looking to end abortion in the US.
Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court on December 3, 2018, in Washington.
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Despite a historically diverse high court, its voting rules often fail to include minority viewpoints. That could be avoided if justices decided their cases by unanimous vote.
The collective memory of school desegregation is of anger and division, like in this photo of 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford walking away from a crowd outside a high school in Little Rock, Ark.
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Americans’ collective memory of school desegregation involves crowds of screaming white protesters. But less well known are the whites who stood by quietly, and those who approved of the changes.
The Supreme Court has no army to enforce its decisions; its authority rests solely on its legitimacy.
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The Supreme Court is a leading player in enacting policy in the US. But it has no army to enforce its decisions; its authority rests solely on its legitimacy.
Black teachers comprise just 7% of U.S. public school teachers even though 16% of their students are Black.
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Two scholars of inclusive education explain how segregated Black schools advocated for Black children in a way that’s often missing from today’s desegregated classrooms.
President Lyndon Johnson signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which aimed to do away with racial discrimination in the law. But discrimination persisted.
AP file photo
Concerns over how to make schools safe amid the coronavirus remain. But for many low-income students of color, old buildings in need of repair already presented a heath risk.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, surprised many court watchers by authoring the decision to expand the Civil Rights Act.
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Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the Supreme Court as a conservative. But his ruling in a major civil rights case is part of a pattern of justices setting aside ideology to address historic injustices.