Judge lifts Richmond County school desegration order | The Augusta Chronicle

Decades after a former Richmond County superintendent said segregation must be maintained “at any cost,” a federal judge on Wednesday freed the school system from a 1972 desegregation order that forced integration and led to the racial equality in classrooms today.

School rooms were mostly empty Feb. 14, 1972, as Richmond County parents participated in a boycott, protesting federally ordered school desegregation by busing. This Bungalow Road School classroom was typical of many throughout the school system.

U.S. District Court Judge Dudley H. Bowen Jr. wrote the district is in “unitary status” for successfully correcting past ills and achieving desegregation in the student, teacher and staff populations; and facilities, activities and transportation.

Attorney Ben Allen, who in 1986 began representing the plaintiffs who brought the original case against the school system in 1964, said a world of progress has been made over the years and he is comfortable in moving forward without the order.

“It’s a good day for the Augusta education community,” Allen said. “I have to agree that the community has come together with one priority in mind: to provide a quality education for all its students.”

The case originated in 1964, when a group of activists led by 17-year-old Robert Acree sued the school system for blatantly ignoring the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case, declaring separate schools for blacks and whites was unconstitutional. Real progress was not made until 1972, when then-U.S. District Judge Alexander A. Lawrence issued a desegregation order that specified a plan for clustering schools and busing white and black children to learn together.

via Judge lifts Richmond County school desegration order | The Augusta Chronicle.