The epic story of Detroit's struggle to integrate schools in its suburbs--and the defeat of desegregation in the North. In 1974, the Supreme Court issued a momentous decision: In the case of Milliken v. Bradley, the justices brought a halt to school desegregation across the North, and to the civil rights movement's struggle for a truly equal education for all. In The Containment, the esteemed legal scholar Michelle Adams tells the epic story of the struggle to integrate Detroit schools--and what happened when it collided with Nixon-appointed justices committed to a judicial counterrevolution. Adams chronicles the devoted activists who tried to uplift Detroit's students amid the upheavals of riots, Black power, and white flight--and how their efforts led to federal judge Stephen Roth's landmark order to achieve racial balance by tearing down the walls separating the city and its suburbs.

Focusing on the City of Detroit, which via the historic Supreme Court case, Milliken v. Bradley, stands as the central site of analysis for these broader national dynamics of race, education, and integration--what we term as a "new political economy of integration"--this volume offers a multidisciplinary perspective on the critical role integration must play in the project of America becoming a multiracial democracy as US populations continue to grow more diverse and will soon transform the nation into a multiracial majority for the first time in its history.