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Many observers believed that, for school busing to be effective as an instrument of school integration, black students should be bused out of the central cities into schools in the outlying suburbs. Only in this way, it was argued, could busing be instituted without having the effect of driving the remaining white families out of the city. The Supreme Court did not agree with this proposed solution, however, ruling five-to-four in Milliken v. Bradleythat the suburbs had not caused the de facto segregation in the central cities and thus were not required to help provide a solution to the problem.
The Milliken decision represented a turning-point for the Supreme Court where racial matters were concerned. Richard M. Nixon, a Republican, had been elected president of the United States in 1968, succeeding Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson. Nixon did not share Johnson's enthusiasm for rapid advancement in the civil rights arena, and his Supreme Court appointments had reflected this less-involved attitude. All four Nixon appointees voted with the majority in the Milliken v. Bradley decision. The central cities were to cope alone with the problem of de facto segregation of public schools. The suburbs had been granted judicial permission to remain "lily white."
After the Milliken decision, school administrators in central cities searched for imaginative new ways to provide some measure of racial integration in their school systems. One idea was creating "magnet schools" with specialized curricula, such as advanced science or music classes, that students from the suburbs would want to attend. Improved school buildings often were combined with enriched academic programs to make magnet schools extra attractive to suburban students and their parents. |
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