The ruling by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court rejected major portions of a September 1999 ruling by federal district judge Robert Potter, who had declared the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools fully desegregated and ordered the school board to end any consideration of race in school assignments.

Potter's ruling came in a suit brought by white parents who claimed their children were denied admission to their preferred school because of desegregation measures. It was one of a number of court rulings in recent years aimed at rolling back gains won in the 1960s and '70s in the struggle for Black rights.

In its divided November 30 decision, a panel of appeals court judges in Richmond, Virginia, stated that Charlotte-Mecklenburg officials had not fulfilled their desegregation obligations.

They cited the fact that schools have been built in largely white neighborhoods, making them difficult to integrate. School buildings in predominantly Black neighborhoods have been allowed to deteriorate. Those students who are bused for integration are overwhelmingly Black. And school administrators did not monitor student transfers to ensure they did not lead to resegregation.

In the course of the massive struggles against Jim Crow segregation that swept the South in the 1950s and a '60s, working people who are Black won court-ordered busing in the historic Swann vs. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education ruling in 1969. From 1970 to 1992, desegregation was carried out through county-wide mandatory busing.

Since the early 1990s, however, there has been a pattern of resegregation, as the school board emphasized "magnet" programs over crosstown busing. A lottery system has kept the magnet schools integrated, but in many other schools racial disparities have grown.

When Judge Potter ordered the end of all further desegregation measures, his ruling was appealed by Black parents and a majority of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board. More than 100 people turned out for the appeals court hearing in Richmond in June, many of them traveling on an NAACP-organized bus from Charlotte in defense of desegregation.

Opponents of school desegregation say they will now appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. As things now stand, school assignments next year will be made under the same rules as the last several years.

Debate over the various school assignment plans is continuing. One high school student told the daily Charlotte Observer she hoped the "school choice" plan would be rejected. Under the current set-up, Christine Taylor said, she goes to school with friends who are Black, white, Asian, and Latino, and that would change if desegregation ended. "It's good that we have the racial mix. All my friends say the same thing," she said.  
 
 
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