Court Orders Miss. Town to Desegregate

A federal court has ordered a Mississippi town to combine its junior high school and high schools to fully desegregate its school system after a 50-year battle with the Department of Justice. Black students and white students have been primarily separated into two different schools in Cleveland, Mississippi. The schools will be forced together to avoid the uncharacteristic separation. “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,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.