From the Arkansas Advocate:
A federal judge ended a 43-year desegregation case Thursday when he ruled a central Arkansas school district was now providing equitable facilities to its students after years of court supervision.
In a seven-page ruling, U.S. District Judge D.P. Marshall Jr. said the Pulaski County Special School District had eliminated the inequalities identified in 2020 between Joe T. Robinson Middle School and Mills University Studies High School.
Black students account for about 28% of enrollment at the middle school and 60% of enrollment at the high school, according to the Arkansas Department of Education.
The district over the past five years has made several upgrades at the high school, including six new traditional classrooms, office space, a softball field and a multi-purpose arena that seats more than 2,200, according to the order.
“We’ve come far. Though of course imperfect, like all human institutions, today the Pulaski County Special School District is unitary,” Marshall wrote. “In good faith, it has eliminated insofar as practicable the traces of past discrimination.”
The decision comes nearly 70 years after President Dwight Eisenhower sent federal troops to escort nine Black students past an angry white mob into Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The case stems from the disparities that persisted after Little Rock integrated its schools.
The court will retain its jurisdiction until April 30 to address any disputes between parties in the case about earned but unpaid attorney’s fees.
The case began in November 1982 when the Little Rock School District, in response to continued racial disparities in education, sued to create one consolidated and integrated countywide school district, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
A district court ruled in 1984 that three Pulaski County school districts were unconstitutionally segregated: Little Rock School District, Pulaski County Special School District and North Little Rock School District.
The court placed the districts under court supervision until they could be declared unitary, a status they could achieve after meeting the criteria of desegregation laid out by the U.S. Supreme Court in Green v. County School Board of New Kent County.
Criteria included an acceptable ratio of Black to white students and faculty and equality in facilities and extracurricular activities.
Little Rock and North Little Rock’s districts had previously been found unitary. Marshall in 2014 approved a settlement that allowed the phase-out of payments stemming from the 1982 case that the state had been making to the three districts to aid desegregation efforts.
Arkansas Advocate Editor-in-chief Andrew DeMillo contributed to this report.
