Eric, As you know, Brown v. Board m very well intentioned, was a dismal failure on the ground, especially in our home town.
Brown along with other measures designed to increse integration dramitically increased it. It preciptated a desperate rush of middle class whites out of the city and ever further into new Baltimore County suburbs, leaving the city with only the porest whites , black folks and rich whites who could afford private school. Of all the white kids in my neighborhood, I and one other were the only ones to stay in Baltimore Public Schools after 6th grade.
Recently I lived in Little Rock for two years. the city was devasted by the results of Brown. Most of the white middle class moved two counties away on the interstate, creating horrible sprawl in Conway and Beton, and leaving much of little rock largely abandoned for decades. The upper class whites who could afford private school remained as did the lower middle class whites and poor whites who could not afford to move.
The result was that a large part of the population of the metro area lives in nasty suburban white ghettos, seperating whites and blacks by thirty miles of lonely highway North west and southeast of Little Rock.
Similar tradegies were repeated all over America.
Good intentions, very sad result.
Phil