In 1974, the US Supreme Court threw up a huge obstacle to school integration.

And the Court's only black justice, Thurgood Marshall, wrote the dissenting opinion.

Our nation I fear will be ill served by this court's refusal to remedies separate and unequal education.

For unless our children begin to learn together,

there is little hope that our people will have a learn to live together and understand each other.

Justice Marshall went on to say the court's decision in his view.

There is more a reflection of a perceived public move

than we have gone far enough before the constitutional guarantee of equal justice

and is the product of neutral principles of law.

This is Code Switch from NPR. I'm Shireen Marisol Maraji.

Milliken V Bradley is the Supreme Court case we're talking about on this episode.

It's history and it's effect on public school education in its country today.

In a 5-4 decision, the court stopped a busing plan in Michigan

that was designed to desegregate Detroit's public schools.

This came two decades after the Brown V Board of Education decision

that was supposed to end public school segregation.

So what happened?

Well, the public mood in the United States that Justice Marshall wrote about in his dissent

it was fearful and angry.

More specifically, this was the mood of many white American voters

who could not stand the idea of busing their kids into black neighborhoods to attend public schools

nor the idea of busing black children into predominantly white school districts.

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