Desegregation busing

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Desegregation busing (also known simply as busing or integrated busing or by its critics as forced busing) was a failed attempt to diversify the racial make-up of schools in the United States by sending students to school districts other than their own.^[1] While the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, many American schools continued to remain largely racially homogeneous. In an effort to address the ongoing de facto segregation in schools, the 1971 Supreme Court decision, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, ruled that the federal courts could use busing as a further integration tool to achieve racial balance.^[2]

Busing met considerable opposition from both white and black people.^[3][4] The policy resulted in the movement of large numbers of white families to suburbs of large cities, a phenomenon known as white flight, which further reduced the effectiveness of the policy.^[5] Many whites who stayed moved their children into private or parochial schools; these effects combined to make many urban school districts predominantly non-white, reducing any effectiveness mandatory busing may have had.^[5]