Desegregation Events in the United States - Essay Example

• 1954 – Brown v. Board of Education – This Supreme Court case overturned the decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. This case declared that laws that created separate, but equal schools for black and white students, were unconstitutional (McBride, 2006).
• 1964 – Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States – In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that it was illegal for motels to select their guests as it sees fit (Cortner, 2001).
• 1964 - Civil Rights Act – This is legislation that outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It ended racial segregation in schools, the workplace, and facilities (Whalen, 1985).

• 1971 – Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education – The court ruled that when finding ways to handle the issue of illegal segregation in schools assigning students to buss was legal (Mickelson, 2001, p. 215-252).
• 1978 - Regents of the University of California v. Bakke – This decision said that affirmative action was not allowed if it resulted in reverse discrimination (Epstein & Knight, 2001, p. 341-379).

• 2003 – Grutter v. Bollinger – This case upheld affirmative action in education as long as there was a “highly individualized, holistic review of each applicant’s file” and in which race was not considered (Cornell University Law School, n.d.).
The consequences of each of these cases eventually lead to total desegregation in the United States. As the timeline shows, with each case, the laws became more and more open to equality among the races. In terms of schools and children, there is now no desegregation and schools are racially diverse as well as the transportation to those schools. Students from any race are allowed to attend their public neighborhood school without issue thanks to the people who pursued these cases. Read More