The Detroit School Busing Case

Baugh's (political science, Central Michigan Univ.) current work is distinctive for its in-depth analyses of school segregation in the North. She explains how the distinguishing features of socioeconomic patterns in Northern cities reinforced patterns of school segregation unseen in the South. She argues that Brown v. Board of Education primarily focused on the Southern brand of deliberate segregation, yet Northern school systems promulgated institutional racism not prohibited by federal law. The author traces a test case in which the NAACP sued on behalf of parents whose children were negatively impacted by the governor's rejection of the city's plan to bus white children to black schools. As Milliken v. Bradley wended its way to Washington, the author details arguments for both sides and shows how the new Nixon majority on the early 1970s Supreme Court ruled in favor of upholding the unique brand of unintentional school segregation in many Northern cities.