1972 Dearborn Resists Integrative Bussing

For years after Brown V Board of Education was passed, schools remained segregated. While the process of school desegregation in the Jim Crow south is well known, school desegregation in the north was equally fraught. For the most part, the process of desegregating school districts was left up to individual districts and regions. In Metro Detroit, school desegregation meant bussing Black students from Detroit into the suburbs, and white students from the suburbs into Detroit. In 1970, the NAACP sued the state of Michigan to desegregate the Detroit Public Schools. In ruling on the case, Judge Stephen Roth indicated that desegregating public schools was the responsibility of all levels of government, and that the government could not legally enforce district boundaries along district boundaries that were designed exploitatively. Racial segregation in the Detroit metro region was even more stark than it is today, with only 13 Black residents in a city of over 100,000 according to the 1970 census.

Opposition to integrative bussing resulted in a temporary halt to the program, which was then solidified by the 1974 Michigan Supreme Court decision Milliken Vs Bradley. This ruling determined that federal courts, "could not impose a multidistrict, area-wide remedy upon local districts in the absence of any evidence those districts committed acts causing racial discrimination." .