The Containment

In 1974 the Supreme Court decided Milliken v. Bradley, a ruling that ended school desegregation efforts across the North and stalled the civil rights movement's push for truly equal education. Michelle Adams, a legal scholar, asks how and why that happened, and answers by telling the story of Detroit's fight to integrate its schools.

She follows the activists who tried to improve life for Detroit's students through riots, the rise of Black power and white flight. Their efforts led federal judge Stephen Roth to order racial balance by removing the barrier between the city and its suburbs. This "metropolitan remedy" might have transformed racial justice in America. That effort then met a Supreme Court shaped by Nixon appointees who were set on a judicial counterrevolution, and the Court ruled that the suburbs could not be included in integration. The inequalities that persist today were left in place.

Adams tells the story through portraits of a city under strain and of key figures, among them Coleman Young, Detroit's first Black mayor, and Justices Marshall, Rehnquist and Powell. The result is part legal history and part human drama, and it traces the origins of today's backlash against affirmative action and other attempts to make good on the country's promises.