Not One Judge's Opinion: Morgan v. Hennigan and the Boston Schools

Abstract:     
In this article, Professor Abrams, who was co-counsel in the Boston School Desegregation Case, explains how Federal District Court Judge Arthur Garrity reached his opinion that the Boston schools were segregated by race as a result of the intentional acts of the Boston School Committee and not because of housing patterns. Judge Garrity’s opinion was based on a decade of federal court decisions that relied upon school board decisions, such as the placement of new schools and the movement of school attendance zones, as evidence of the purposeful separation of students by race. Plaintiffs proved that the segregation in the Boston schools was deliberate and in violation of the Constitutional right of black children and their parents to attend a public school system untainted by discrimination.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 13

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