May 17, 1954: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark US Supreme Court case. The court unanimously declared that state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students was unconstitutional. In 1955, the court ordered states to desegregate “with all deliberate speed.”
July 2, 1964: President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which allowed the federal government to enforce desegregation. The Jim Crow laws of the South were abolished.
Freedom of Choice: A political practice that southern districts adopted in the 1950s and ’60s to delay court-mandated desegregation. Dual zoning of housing—one for blacks, one for whites—was common in the South. Students had the “free choice” to attend a school that was not in their neighborhood. Few made that choice; most students continued to attend racially identifiable schools.