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For all the magnitude of Brown v. Board, he says, the Supreme Court never specified what desegregation should actually encompass or devised a means for evaluating different methods of desegregation鈥攏or did the court do so in the decades that followed. Giving particular scrutiny to the interactions between federal courts and agencies, the book asserts that it is administrators and lower court judges who have largely interpreted and implemented desegregation policy, with a mixed record of success and often amid highly charged circumstances.

Melnick had long planned The Crucible of Desegregation as the second of three books examining the institutional roles of the courts, government, and other key players in American education. Its publication on the eve of last summer鈥檚 Supreme Court ruling that effectively ended affirmative action in college admissions was coincidental, but as the national dialogue on racial equality in education continues, he says, remembering how Brown set the stage for that conversation is important.

鈥淪chool desegregation was critical to institution building in the U.S.,鈥� said Melnick, who was appointed as O鈥橬eill Professor in 1997. 鈥淚t established the alliance between courts and agencies that exemplified the civil rights state which emerged in the 1960s to combat discrimination not only on the basis of race but sex, language, disability, age, and other factors.鈥�

However, he added, this quest faced immediate difficulties because the Supreme Court鈥檚 explanation for its Brown ruling was so incomplete: Instead of a convincing legal argument for invalidating all forms of state-sponsored segregation, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote an opinion crafted to avoid inflaming the South while offering a morally compelling explanation for the court鈥檚 decision that would resonate with the public.

鈥淗e sought an opinion that would unite the U.S., and was short enough to be reprinted in newspapers and clear enough to get public support,鈥� said Melnick, who notes that the court鈥檚 inclusion of the phrase 鈥渨ith all deliberate speed鈥� served to impede compliance with the ruling.

Absent a clear Supreme Court directive, school desegregation followed two paths on the local level, he said, 鈥渂oth insufficient in of themselves and difficult to sustain.鈥� The first was to take a truly color-blind approach, in an attempt to undo the effects of years of segregated education.

鈥淎t the time, this was viewed as the essential step toward eradicating the racial caste system that had long existed in the South,鈥� said Melnick. 鈥淏ut overall, color-blind desegregation proved far too easy for school officials to evade and resist; in response, federal guidelines were revised to institute racial quotas, without much effort to determine to what extent 鈥榬acial balance鈥� would ameliorate the impact of segregated education.鈥�

Later, in the wake of 鈥渨hite flight鈥� and the deterioration of public education in many urban areas, federal judges and administrators sought to eliminate what came to be known as 鈥渞acial isolation鈥� by mandating racial balance in schools in the North as well as the South. Underlying this approach, said Melnick, was the belief that Black students would do better academically in schools that were heavily white鈥攁nd, theoretically, had more resources and a better educational culture. But this path led to a series of busing controversies in the 1970s鈥攁n era, Melnick notes in the book, that was recalled during the 2020 presidential campaign in a terse exchange between then-candidates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.聽 This second phase of desegregation failed to significantly close the achievement gap between Black and Hispanic students and white students.

Melnick points to Boston鈥檚 busing turmoil as indicative of the over-arching problem in carrying out desegregation: 鈥淭he argument for racial balance was that mixing middle-class whites with lower-income Blacks would create a 鈥榗ulture of learning.鈥� That鈥檚 fine, but why do it in South Boston, which had problems of its own in terms of educational resources and culture? The underlying rationale makes no sense, but the Supreme Court guidelines made it difficult for [U.S. District Judge] Arthur Garrity to rule otherwise.鈥�

Through Brown v. Board, according to Melnick, the U.S.鈥攈aving long emphasized education as the path to upward mobility鈥攅ssentially tabbed school desegregation as the driver for racial equality, and over time it became the impetus for expanding the civil rights state.

鈥淚n the U.S., we have long been willing to tolerate income inequality if we think it鈥檚 based on an individual鈥檚 efforts or degree of success. In doing so, we鈥檝e put enormous stress on our schools to level the playing field. We created elementary schools before European countries did, for example, and we鈥檝e spent more on education than most other countries鈥攂ut with worse results.鈥�

One of the major obstacles facing school desegregation other types of reforms, said Melnick, is that education is a highly decentralized process that relies to a large extent on local control, and is difficult to change from the top down鈥攅specially when there are far-reaching social and economic factors that reach well beyond the school grounds.

鈥淚f school desegregation did achieve some meaningful successes, at the same time it revealed more complicated issues to deal with in our education system than racial discrimination. For example, is it 鈥榙iscrimination鈥� if some kids begin school with a sound basis in reading because their parents read with them when they were little, whereas the parents of other kids weren鈥檛 able to? Or if one family has the resources to hire private tutors for their kids, and another doesn鈥檛?

鈥淭he fact is, there are severe inequalities present before kids even start school, so some will go in with advantages others lack, and desegregation by itself is not going to solve this.鈥澛�