Photograph: A school bus with mostly white and a few black students, traveling from the suburbs to a city school in Charlotte, North Carolina, on February 21, 1973. Photo credit: Warren K. Leffler | Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons. In response, many white families made efforts to secede from existing school districts, especially since the Supreme Court case Milliken v. Bradley (1974) declared that racial integration across school districts was not required by Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
Introduction
This page spotlights efforts to secede from poorer school districts and form new, wealthier ones.
Messages and Resources
A series of blog posts where we explore how Christian (mostly Protestant) heresies started and continue to influence our modern political and racial challenges. This includes the very notion of race itself, and how our modern economics, housing, schooling, and policing systems have been shaped. Christians must take responsibility for these heresies in the framework of repentance. We have designed a study guide to accompany the blog posts. Please consider using it for personal reflection or discussion in your family, church, organization, etc. See especially:
The Myth of Meritocracy in Schooling, Part 1. A 10 minute read. This post highlights the impact of resource inequality on educational outcomes and student experience.
The Myth of Meritocracy in Schooling, Part 2. A 10 minute read. This post highlights the impact of resource inequality and racial-cultural dynamics on disciplinary outcomes and student experience.
Welcoming the New Kid: A Christian Study and Action Guide to the Opportunity Gap in Public Education
A small group discussion guide to a few major issues in public schooling, and how church communities can partner with local schools. Topics include: school financing; residential segregation; whether charter schools should be able to fire students; the school-to-prison pipeline; and the honoring of teachers.
A summary of the remarkable dignity that Christians perceived in children, who had no inherent dignity or status in pagan Greco-Roman cultures. This impacted views on infanticide, abortion, social welfare, and education. Based on outstanding research by O.M. Bakke, When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity.
Christian Restorative Justice: Beyond Charity - God's Restorative Justice for Children and Families
A presentation glancing at how Christians have historically supported children and their livelihood and development
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Wikipedia, Piedmont, CA (Wikipedia article) 1907 city of millionaires
Wikipedia, Hedwig Village, TX (Wikipedia article) 1954 aka Spring Branch
Daniel Engber, How To Start Your Own Town. Slate, Nov 17, 2005.
Gary Orfield & Chungmei Lee, Historic Reversals, Accelerating Resegregation, and the Need for New Integration Strategies. Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles, UCLA, Aug 2007.
Larry Copeland, Georgia Scraps Over Creation of New, Mostly White Cities. USA Today, Jul 30, 2012. incorporating 6 cities outside Atlanta to redistrict taxes and schools, also covered favorably by John T. Bennett, Suburbs Secede from Atlanta. World News Daily, Mar 10, 2013. citing the DeKalb corruption scandal, calling Atlanta the "Detroit of the South" and The Economist, Here's How To Do It. The Economist, Jul 28, 2012.
Carolyn Renee Dupont, Mississippi Praying: Southern White Evangelicals and the Civil Rights Movement, 1945 - 1975. NYU Press | Amazon page, 2013. andreview by Matthew Tuininga. Reformation 21, July 2015.
Shadee Ashtari, Richer White People In Greater Baton Rouge Seek To Secede From Poorer Black Neighbors. Huffington Post, Dec 3, 2013.
Susan Eaton, How a ‘New Secessionist’ Movement Is Threatening to Worsen School Segregation and Widen Inequalities. The Nation, May 15, 2014. Gardendale, Alabama next to Jefferson County; St. George, Louisiana next to Baton Rouge; six suburbs in Memphis, Tennessee which broke away after school district integration
Richard Rothstein, The Making of Ferguson: Public Policies at the Root of its Troubles. Economic Policy Institute, Oct 15, 2014.
Maureen Downey, Opinion: We Cannot Allow Georgia Cities to Create Their Own School Districts. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jul 20, 2015.
Roshan Nebhrajani, Miami-Dade May Get a Few New Cities. The New Tropic, Apr 3, 2016.
Archie Ingersoll, Officials in North Dakota Town See No Way to Block White Supremacist Cobb from Buying Old Church. Bismark Tribune, Feb 5, 2017. another example of incorporating cities; he hoped to draw white nationalists from across the country to the town and eventually take over the incorporated town
Jenee Desmond-Harris, The Racist Panic Over Ruby Bridges is Not Just History - It's Our Political Present. Vox, Feb 17, 2017.
Richard Liebson, Edgemont Incorporation Meetings Set This Week. lohud, Mar 28, 2017. Edgemont, NY to become the newest, wealthiest town in Greenburgh, NY which could lose a projected $17.5 million in tax revenues should Edgemont become a separate village
Sam Rosen, Atlanta's Controversial Cityhood Movement. The Atlantic, Apr 28, 2017.
Emma Brown, Judge: Mostly White Southern City May Secede from School District Despite Racial Motive. Washington Post, Apr 27, 2017.
Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Liveright | Amazon page, May 2, 2017. and review by David Oshinky
Valerie Strauss, Back to the Future: A New School District Secession Movement is Gaining Steam. Washington Post, May 2, 2017. details the political and media strategies that these communities employ
Lauren Camera, The Quiet Wave of School District Secessions. US News & World Report, May 5, 2017. since 1986, 47 school districts have splintered off to create new whiter and wealthier districts
Alvin Chang, School Segregation Didn't Go Away. It Just Evolved. Vox, Jul 27, 2017.
Carly Sitrin, The Weeds: The Quiet Comeback of School Segregation. Vox, Aug 2, 2017.
Alvin Chang, The Data Proves That School Segregation Is Getting Worse. Vox, Mar 5, 2018.
Brentin Mock, Atlanta: A Tale of New Cities. CityLab, Mar 10, 2018.
Em Steck and Andrew Kaczynski, Elizabeth Warren’s First Law Review Article Blasted an Anti-Busing Court Ruling. CNN, Jul 6, 2019. re: Milliken v. Bradley (1974) in Michigan, which defanged Brown v. Board by allowing States to escape responsibility for white flight across, and into new, school districts. Brown v. Board only addressed racial disparities within a school district.
Brett Pulley and Brentin Mock, Atlanta’s Wealthiest and Whitest District Wants to Secede. Bloomberg Businessweek, Oct 1, 2021. “Some residents are pushing to make Buckhead its own city, the latest in a series of political ruptures by race and class across the metro area.”
Johnny Harris and Binyamin Applebaum, Liberal Hypocrisy is Fueling American Inequality. Here’s How. New York Times Opinion, Nov 9, 2021. Harris looks at blue states (CA, WA, NY, IL) and the failure to act on housing, taxes, and education. Harris examines Palo Alto, CA as an example of NIMBYism and rezoning for lower density neighborhoods.
Chelsea Brasted, New Wealthy, White City in Louisiana Just Became One of State's Largest Towns. Axios, May 2, 2024.
Adria R. Walker, Consent Decrees Force Schools to Desegregate. The Trump Administration Is Striking Them Down. The Guardian UK, Jul 24, 2025. “Plaquemines parish, Louisiana, will not be forced to follow the law for the first time since the 1960s.” “In late April, the Department of Justice announced that it was ending a decades-long consent decree in Plaquemines parish, Louisiana, in a school district that has been under a desegregation order since the Johnson administration in the 1960s. The Plaquemines parish desegregation order, one of more than 130 such orders nationwide, was in place to ensure that the school district, which initially refused to integrate, followed the law. Many consent decrees of the era are still in existence because school districts are not in compliance with the law.”
Race and Schooling: Topics:
Race: Topics:
Church and Empire: Topics:
