Race-Based School Plan Is Challenged
A lawsuit filed for a white first-grader threatens school desegregation policies in Charlotte, N.C., where a landmark ruling 30 years ago cleared the way for busing to integrate public schools nationwide.
The federal trial, set to open here today, is the latest attack on racial quotas and busing plans drawn up since the late 1960s by local school boards to end segregation.
“Ultimately, it comes down to whether race can be used to decide which schools students can attend,” Charlotte schools spokesman John Deem said.
In 1969, Charlotte was at ground zero in the explosive desegregation debate after a federal judge ruled in a landmark case--Swann vs. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education--that schools could bus students far from home to eliminate segregated neighborhood schools.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ruling two years later.
U.S. District Judge Robert Potter reopened the Swann case here after a Charlotte parent, William Capacchione, alleged that his daughter Christina was refused admission to a so-called magnet school, a special public school with a focused curriculum, because she is white.
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