Mississippi district will desegregate schools after half-century fight
Cleveland, Mississippi schools have been segregated for decades, but the area's predominantly black and predominantly white schools will now merge after a half-century-long legal battle ended on Monday, with a federal court ruling that said the notion of "separate but equal" had to go.
“Six decades after the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education declared that ‘separate but equal has no place’ in public schools, this decision serves as a reminder to districts that delaying desegregation obligations is both unacceptable and unconstitutional,” Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, said in an online statement.
You May Also Like
The Justice Department worked with local officials to come up with a plan to merge the schools, a move they said was necessary to overcome the negative stigma they said was attached to predominantly black schools.
There is, the department said, a "sense among black children in the community that white children attended better schools."
Cleveland's 12,000 residents also live divided by race. Black and white residents generally live on opposite side of the train tracks that run through the city.
One resident testified to the Justice Department that the restructuring of the school system will hopefully begin to bridge the city's racial chasm.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
Colin is Mashable's US & World Reporter. He previously interned at Foreign Policy magazine and The American Prospect. Colin is a graduate from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. When he's not at Mashable, you can most likely find him eating or playing some kind of sport.
