In 1966, the plaintiffs brought this desegregation lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama. The plaintiffs, African-American minor school children, by and through their parents, sued the defendant Barbour County Board of Education to enjoin the operation of a segregated school system. They were represented by, among others, Jack Greenberg (for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund).
The plaintiffs requested admission to various schools in the district pursuant to a "freedom of choice" plan that the Board was operating. In 1965, the Board conceded that its school system violated the Constitution; it adopted the choice plan as part of its efforts to desegregate the school system beginning in the 1965-66 school year. The plaintiffs applied for admission to various schools for the 1966-67 school year but were denied because, according to the Board, their choices weren't "practical" given that school bus transportation -- which had been set up during the years that the district had operated in a segregated fashion -- was allegedly not available from the plaintiffs' homes. The court (Judge Frank Johnson) rejected the Board's arguments that it could not grant admission because of the transportation issue. In an order for preliminary injunction, he ordered the Board to revise its bus transportation system to accommodate all students' requests. He also ordered the Board to admit the plaintiffs in this case to their schools of choice and to provide them with transportation. Judge Johnson also laid the contours of what he deemed an appropriate school choice plan for the Board to implement, ordering that it begin with the fall 1967 term and apply to all grades in Barbour County, which, he ordered, must be desegregated. 259 F.Supp. 545 (M.D. Ala. Sept. 22, 1966).
On July 10, 1970, the district court approved a new desegregation plan, which stayed largely unchanged until the mid-1990s. At that point, the parties reviewed the Board's progress in desegregating and negotiated a new consent decree, approved on September 8, 1997. In that decree, the court found that the Board had achieved unitary status in facilities but not in any other area.
On September 8, 1997, the district court (Judge William Albritton) entered a new consent decree to govern the Board's desegregation efforts.
In 2000, the district court approved the consolidation of the high schools in Barbour County, and in 2004 it approved the consolidation and reorganization of the district's lower schools.
By the late 2000s, the lawsuit reached its conclusion. In 2007, the parties negotiated another consent decree, their last, which the court subsequently approved. At the end of that decree, in 2011, no party moved for an extension of the court's jurisdiction. And on April 18, 2013, the court declared that the Board had met the requirements for a declaration of unitary status and dismissed the case.
Available OpinionsFranklin v. Barbour County Board of Education, 259 F.Supp. 545 (M.D. Ala. Sept. 22, 1966)
Greg Margolis - 02/23/2017
Virginia Weeks - 11/03/2017
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