Trump officials are vowing to end school desegregation orders. Some
parents say they're still needed
[June 09, 2025]
By COLLIN BINKLEY and SHARON LURYE
FERRIDAY, La. (AP) — Even at a glance, the differences are obvious. The
walls of Ferriday High School are old and worn, surrounded by barbed
wire. Just a few miles away, Vidalia High School is clean and bright,
with a new library and a crisp blue “V” painted on orange brick.
Ferriday High is 90% Black. Vidalia High is 62% white.
For Black families, the contrast between the schools suggests “we’re not
supposed to have the finer things,” said Brian Davis, a father in
Ferriday. “It’s almost like our kids don’t deserve it,” he said.
The schools are part of Concordia Parish, which was ordered to
desegregate 60 years ago and remains under a court-ordered plan to this
day. Yet there’s growing momentum to release the district — and dozens
of others — from decades-old orders that some call obsolete.
In a remarkable reversal, the Justice Department said it plans to start
unwinding court-ordered desegregation plans dating to the Civil Rights
Movement. Officials started in April, when they lifted a 1960s order in
Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish. Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the
department’s civil rights division, has said others will “bite the
dust.”
It comes amid pressure from Republican Gov. Jeff Landry and his attorney
general, who have called for all the state’s remaining orders to be
lifted. They describe the orders as burdens on districts and relics of a
time when Black students were still forbidden from some schools.
The orders were always meant to be temporary — school systems can be
released if they demonstrate they fully eradicated segregation. Decades
later, that goal remains elusive, with stark racial imbalances
persisting in many districts.
Civil rights groups say the orders are important to keep as tools to
address the legacy of forced segregation — including disparities in
student discipline, academic programs and teacher hiring. They point to
cases like Concordia, where the decades-old order was used to stop a
charter school from favoring white students in admissions.
“Concordia is one where it's old, but a lot is happening there,” said
Deuel Ross, deputy director of litigation for the NAACP Legal Defense
Fund. “That’s true for a lot of these cases. They’re not just sitting
silently.”
Debates over integration are far from settled
Last year, before President Donald Trump took office, Concordia Parish
rejected a Justice Department plan that would have ended its case if the
district combined several majority white and majority Blac k elementary
and middle schools.
At a town hall meeting, Vidalia residents vigorously opposed the plan,
saying it would disrupt students’ lives and expose their children to
drugs and violence. An official from the Louisiana attorney general’s
office spoke against the proposal and said the Trump administration
likely would change course on older orders.
Accepting the plan would have been a “death sentence” for the district,
said Paul Nelson, a former Concordia superintendent. White families
would have fled to private schools or other districts, said Nelson, who
wants the court order removed.
“It’s time to move on,” said Nelson, who left the district in 2016.
“Let’s start looking to build for the future, not looking back to what
our grandparents may have gone through.”
At Ferriday High, athletic coach Derrick Davis supported combining
schools in Ferriday and Vidalia. He said the district's disparities come
into focus whenever his teams visit schools with newer sports
facilities.
“It seems to me, if we’d all combine, we can all get what we need,” he
said.
Others oppose merging schools if it’s done solely for the sake of
achieving racial balance. “Redistricting and going to different places
they’re not used to ... it would be a culture shock to some people,"
said Ferriday’s school resource officer, Marcus Martin, who, like
Derrick Davis, is Black.
[to top of second column]
|
The district’s current superintendent and school board did not
respond to requests for comment.
Federal orders offer leverage for racial discrimination cases
Concordia is among more than 120 districts across the South that
remain under desegregation orders from the 1960s and ’70s, including
about a dozen in Louisiana.
Calling the orders historical relics is “unequivocally false,” said
Shaheena Simons, who until April led the Justice Department section
that oversees school desegregation cases.
“Segregation and inequality persist in our schools, and they persist
in districts that are still under desegregation orders,” she said.
With court orders in place, families facing discrimination can reach
out directly to the Justice Department or seek relief from the
court. Otherwise, the only recourse is a lawsuit, which many
families can’t afford, Simons said.
In Concordia, the order played into a battle over a charter school
that opened in 2013 on the former campus of an all-white private
school. To protect the area’s progress on racial integration, a
judge ordered Delta Charter School to build a student body that
reflected the district’s racial demographics. But in its first year,
the school was just 15% Black.
After a court challenge, Delta was ordered to give priority to Black
students. Today, about 40% of its students are Black.
Desegregation orders have been invoked recently in other cases
around the state. One led to an order to address disproportionately
high rates of discipline for Black students, and in another a
predominantly Black elementary school was relocated from a site
close to a chemical plant.
The Justice Department could easily end some desegregation orders
The Trump administration was able to close the Plaquemines case with
little resistance because the original plaintiffs were no longer
involved — the Justice Department was litigating the case alone.
Concordia and an unknown number of other districts are in the same
situation, making them vulnerable to quick dismissals.
Concordia’s case dates to 1965, when the area was strictly
segregated and home to a violent offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan. When
Black families in Ferriday sued for access to all-white schools, the
federal government intervened.
As the district integrated its schools, white families fled
Ferriday. The district's schools came to reflect the demographics of
their surrounding areas. Ferriday is mostly Black and low-income,
while Vidalia is mostly white and takes in tax revenue from a
hydroelectric plant. A third town in the district, Monterey, has a
high school that's 95% white.
At the December town hall, Vidalia resident Ronnie Blackwell said
the area “feels like a Mayberry, which is great,” referring to the
fictional Southern town from “The Andy Griffith Show.” The federal
government, he said, has “probably destroyed more communities and
school systems than it ever helped.”
Under its court order, Concordia must allow students in majority
Black schools to transfer to majority white schools. It also files
reports on teacher demographics and student discipline.
After failing to negotiate a resolution with the Justice Department,
Concordia is scheduled to make its case that the judge should
dismiss the order, according to court documents. Meanwhile, amid a
wave of resignations in the federal government, all but two of the
Justice Department lawyers assigned to the case have left.
Without court supervision, Brian Davis sees little hope for
improvement.
“A lot of parents over here in Ferriday, they’re stuck here because
here they don’t have the resources to move their kids from A to B,"
he said. “You’ll find schools like Ferriday — the term is, to me,
slipping into darkness."
All contents © copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved |
