CBS News, May 20, 2019
School segregation is on the rise 65 years after the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, according to the co-author of a new report. At the time of the ruling in1954, schools were legally segregated under the "separate but equal" doctrine, and the court ordered schools to start integrating.
Gary Orfield, a professor at UCLA and the co-founder of The Civil Rights Project, joined CBSN's Kenneth Craig to explain how Supreme Court decisions made in the 1990s caused schools to start becoming resegregated. Orfield co-authored a report on the issue for The Civil Rights Project, which is noted for being the nation's leading research center on issues of civil rights and racial inequality.
"In 1991, the Supreme Court, in a case from Oklahoma City, said that desegregation was a temporary punishment, not a long-term requirement," he said. "And a lot of school districts returned to segregated neighborhood schools and put pressure on court judges to end desegregation. Ever since that time, segregation has been increasing."