Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education

• Jurisdiction: United States
• Date: 01 January 2005
• Author: Jeffrey Lehman, Shirelle Phelps

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During the 15 years that followed the Supreme Court's momentous SCHOOL DESEGREGATION decision in BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873 (1954), school boards throughout the South did little to eliminate racial separation in the public schools. In some cases school boards merely announced a race-neutral school attendance policy. In other cases white-dominated school boards closed schools that were ripe for INTEGRATION and instead built new schools in suburban areas that would be virtually white-only. The NAACP and the federal government became increasingly frustrated by these methods and sought relief in the federal courts. As federal courts began to issue desegregation plans, questions arose over whether court-ordered supervision of local schools was proper. In Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1, 91 S. Ct. 1267, 28 L. Ed.2d 554 (1971) (also known as North Carolina State Board of Education v. Swann, the Supreme Court issued another landmark decision, ruling that federal courts could exercise their remedial powers to end a dual school system divided by race. The Court made clear that when school boards refused to act in GOOD FAITH, the federal courts had broad discretion to order, implement, and oversee the desegregation of school systems. In addition, the Court endorsed the use of busing to ensure desegregation. Swann was a controversial decision that guided federal courts for almost 30 years. By the late 1990s, however, federal courts had ended oversight of school desegregation and busing began to lose favor.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system included the city of Charlotte and the surrounding Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. The school district was very large, encompassing over 550 square miles of territory. During the 1968?1969 school year 84,000 pupils attended 107 schools in the district, with 71 percent of the students white and 29 percent black. Of the 24,000 black students, 21,000 attended schools within the city of Charlotte. Of that number, 14,000 black students attended 21 schools with were either completely black or more than 99 percent black. These statistics demonstrated that the racial SEGREGATION persisted 15 years after the Brown decision. James E. Swann and a number of other black parents filed suit in 1965, asking the federal court to mandate that the school system be desegregated. The school board responded by passing a plan based on geographic ZONING with a free-transfer provision. Swann and the other plaintiffs returned to court

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in 1968 and asked again for a plan that would dismantle the dual system and impose a unitary system upon the school district.

The district court conducted many hearings on the issues and found that the school district had drawn school attendance zones in such a...