Busing debate returns, with some districts still segregated
CLEVELAND, Miss. — This small Mississippi Delta town serves as a reminder that the integration of black students and white students is not a thing of the past.
Two rival high schools in Cleveland, Mississippi — one historically black and the other historically white — were merged just a few years ago after a judge determined that all-black student bodies in the 3,400-student district were illegal vestiges of segregation. It is one of scores of school districts across the United States still facing federal desegregation mandates, and the decision followed a fight over the town's segregated schools that dates back to 1965.
The federal government's role in integrating schools returned to the national spotlight recently, after an exchange between former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris during the Democratic presidential debate.
Biden was attacked for his work as a senator in the 1970s to oppose federally ordered busing to achieve a racial balance in schools. Harris noted that she had benefited from a busing program that allowed her to attend an integrated elementary school in California.
The clash proved to be a stumbling block for Biden's campaign, but the debate's focus on 1970s-era busing — when the practice was at its peak — belied the fact that federally ordered integration efforts still exist.
Joseph Wardenski, the Justice Department's lead lawyer during the 2015 Mississippi trial, said Cleveland is an example of why school desegregation isn't "ancient history."
"There is still very much of a role for courts and the federal government to get the job done," Wardenski said.
Since Cleveland's consolidated high school opened in 2017, there have been some points of tension, but many see the consolidation as progress.
"It's better that they brought the schools together as far as having the races interact," said Allison Tyler, whose 16-yearold daughter, Valencia, is black and a junior at the high school.
The district's majoritywhite school board resisted the merger for several years, despite federal pressure, with some predicting white flight to private schools.
The two sons of Carmen Oguz are among the white children who have stayed to attend Cleveland Central High School this fall. Oguz said the family chose to remain in the district in part because her younger son wanted a more competitive football team. She said she's also happy with the academics.
But most of her younger son's friends made a different choice on graduating from a magnet elementary school and left the district. "He was definitely in the minority," she said.
Currently, an estimated 150 to 200 school districts nationwide are operating under desegregation orders, according to Erica Frankenberg, a Pennsylvania State University professor who said nobody keeps a precise count.
Schools in the South are better integrated racially than those elsewhere because of desegregation plans implemented in the 1960s and 1970s, Frankenberg said. And though every district is different, she said, "what we can say pretty definitively is that desegregation has been shown to have a wide range of academic and social benefits."
Districts released from court orders have tended to relax their integration efforts, a major factor in the resegregation of many schools nationwide, according to Sheneka Williams, an associate professor at the University of Georgia.
Communities might support desegregation in the abstract, but "oftentimes, they don't want to shuffle their kids around for racial balance," Williams said.
In districts released from federal desegregation orders, as well as districts that were never under court order, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that race can't be used as the driving factor in assigning students to public schools, whether to integrate or segregate them. However, a 2016 Century Foundation report found at least 100 districts and charter schools nationwide have voluntary desegregation plans that work around the ruling by mixing students from families with different incomes or education levels, factors often associated with race.
Through earlier integration efforts, Cleveland High and its neighboring middle school, once all-white, were by 2011 about half white and half black. But East Side High School and its associated middle school, once all-black by law, remained almost entirely black. The school district and even some African Americans defended the two sets of schools, pointing to community pride in East Side's athletic teams and traditions.