Fact Friday 291 - More about Swann

The UNC Charlotte Special Collections department recently highlighted that we just passed the 50 year anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court case, Swann v. Charlotte Mecklenburg Board of Education. Whether you're new to Charlotte or a native like myself, this is history you need to know. 

This landmark case stated that busing students to achieve racial integration of schools was constitutional. The ruling came six years after civil rights lawyer Julius Chambers first filed the lawsuit in 1965. The Supreme Court decision led to Charlotte becoming known as “the city that made desegregation work” and one of the most integrated school systems in the country, until Swann’s reversal in 1999 and the school system’s eventual return to neighborhood schools.

We have more of a deep dive on the case in our Fact Friday 135, but as you guys probably know by now, I'm very big on experiential learning. UNC Charlotte highlighted that you can learn more about the court case and how it changed Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools by visiting #UNCCGoldmine, where you can explore the legal case through Julius Chambers’s papers and the papers of Benjamin S. Horack, the lawyer for the school system. Also available on Goldmine is the Margaret Whitton Ray Papers, which documents how the Citizens Advisory Group developed a set of pupil assignment guidelines. A compromise between the CAG assignment plans and the school system’s assignment plan was approved by the courts in May 1974.