Case study of the 1978 court ordered desegregation of New Castle County and Wilmington, Delaware

Public schools in New Castle County and Wilmington, Delaware, were desegregated in 1978 as the result of the implementation of a metropolitan school desegregation order. During the execution of the court order, students of both New Castle County and the city of Wilmington were reassigned to different schools in an attempt to achieve and maintain racial balance in public schools. After the lifting of the court order in 1994, the public schools of New Castle County and Wilmington, Delaware gradually developed into racially identifiable schools. Many of the accomplishments of the court order had vanished, and patterns of segregation began to reappear throughout the various New Castle County school districts. This case study used interviews gathered from four African-American individuals involved in the implementation process and analyzed their perspectives on the successes and failures of the court order.