Desegregation

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Arkansas cannot cut off millions of dollars in funding for desegregation programs in Little Rock-area school districts until a challenge to the payments gets a separate federal court hearing, an appeals court ruled yesterday. The ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit comes months after US District Judge Brian Miller ordered an end to most of the payments, calling them counterproductive. He accused three school districts of delaying desegregation to continue getting state money.

PHILADELPHIA - Louis H. Pollak, a federal judge who as a young lawyer helped work on the pivotal school-desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education, and later served as dean of two Ivy League law schools, has died. He was 89. Judge Pollack, of the US district court, died Tuesday at his home in Philadelphia's West Mount Airy neighborhood, Michael Kunz, clerk of the federal district court, said Thursday. "He was brilliant in issues of jurisprudence. However, that was tempered with a humility that is not often seen in persons of his standing in the legal profession," Kunz said,...

NEW YORK - Officials in Shelby County, Tenn., say they will have to spend millions to satisfy a federal judge's "arbitrary" desegregation order. It will mean busing minority students up to an hour away and replacing hundreds of white teachers with black ones, they say. In Huntsville, Ala., under a similar court order, students can transfer from a school where they are in the racial majority, but not the other way around. And in the Tucson Unified School District, students could move from one school to another only if the change improved "the ethnic balance of the receiving...

Louis H. Pollak, a federal judge who as a young lawyer helped work on the pivotal school-desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education, and later served as dean of two Ivy League law schools, has died. He was 89. Pollak, a U.S. district judge, died Tuesday at his home in Philadelphia's West Mount Airy neighborhood, Michael Kunz, clerk of federal district court, said Thursday. "He was brilliant in issues of jurisprudence. However, that was tempered with a humility that is not often seen in persons of his standing in the legal profession," Kunz said, noting that Pollak's legal...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - More than a half-century after federal troops escorted nine black students into an all-white school, efforts to desegregate Little Rock's classrooms are at another turning point. The state wants to end its long-running payments for desegregation programs, but three school districts that receive the money say they need it to continue key programs. And a federal judge has accused the schools of delaying desegregation so they can keep receiving an annual infusion of $70 million.

INDIANAPOLIS -- Former federal Judge S. Hugh Dillin, who oversaw the desegregation of the Indianapolis schools during more than three decades on the bench, died Monday. He was 91. Judge Dillin died in Cambridge, Mass., where he had moved to be near his daughter, Patricia Wright. He grew up in the southwestern Indiana town of Petersburg and was nominated as a district court judge for the southern Indiana district in 1961 by President Kennedy. He remained in that position until 1994, when he went to part-time status for...

ST. LOUIS - A decades-old battle over school desegregation in Little Rock, Ark., reached a federal appeals court yesterday as lawyers for schools involved in the case argued that a judge was wrong to cut off tens of millions of dollars in state funding for programs to achieve racial balance. The Eighth US Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis heard arguments from the Little Rock, North Little Rock, and Pulaski County Special school districts as well as the state of Arkansas, which argues that it shouldn't have to make the payments any longer.

Louis H. Pollak, a federal judge who as a young lawyer helped work on the pivotal school-desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education, and later served as dean of two Ivy League law schools, has died. He was 89. Pollak, a U.S. district judge, died Tuesday at his home in Philadelphia's West Mount Airy neighborhood, Michael Kunz, clerk of federal district court, said Thursday. "He was brilliant in issues of jurisprudence. However, that was tempered with a humility that is not often seen in persons of his standing in the legal profession," Kunz said, noting that...

A century of advocacy 1909 > The NAACP is founded on February 12 in New York. 1911 > The Boston NAACP is recognized as the organization’s first local branch. 1914 > The local branch persuades the Boston School Committee to remove a book containing racist language, Forty Best Songs, from schools. 1938 > The branch wins an extradition case preventing a fugitive from a Georgia chain gang caught in Boston from being sent back, a case that helped end Georgia’s chain-gang system.

PHILADELPHIA - Louis H. Pollak, a federal judge who as a young lawyer helped work on the pivotal school-desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education, and later served as dean of two Ivy League law schools, has died. He was 89. Judge Pollack, of the US district court, died Tuesday at his home in Philadelphia's West Mount Airy neighborhood, Michael Kunz, clerk of the federal district court, said Thursday. "He was brilliant in issues of jurisprudence. However, that was tempered with a humility that is not often seen in persons of his standing in the legal profession,"...

When the music you've made since grade school has led you to concert stages around the world, and you've spent the past 40 years performing with the likes of Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Dave Matthews, Santana, and the Fugees, it can be tough to pinpoint the moment you first realized you'd made it big. So when the question is put to Leon Mobley - master percussionist, drummer for Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals, and proud Roxbury native -...

A heads up to Wellesley marathoners: the town has six Boston Marathon numbers available in exchange for a pledge to raise $4,000 for either Wellesley A Better Chance or Friends of Wellesley METCO charities. Chris Ketchen, Wellesley's Deputy Director of General Government, said that the town received 16 numbers from the Boston Athletic Association to benefit the two charities. Only 10 have been claimed. "As of this moment, it's first come, first serve," said Ketchen.

Mel King is not a man given to snap judgments, and he wasn't inclined to make one yesterday about the complicated legacy of Kevin White. So the former state representative and finalist in the 1983 race to succeed White as mayor expressed a bit of respectful ambivalence on the question of whether he had been a great mayor. "I think people's perception of him is based on tall buildings," he said. "To the extent that that's the hallmark of a world-class city, that's what we have.

Every player in the National Basketball Association can count himself among the so-called 1 percent. For that, all of them, from superstars down to the most obscure scrubs and overpaid busts, owe a moment of silence to Robert L. Carter. As a young lawyer, Carter, who died earlier this month at 94, helped build the case for court-ordered school desegregation. Later, as a federal judge from New York, he set in motion another revolution when he took on a stalled antitrust lawsuit brought against the NBA by star Oscar Robertson and several other veteran players, including the...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Arkansas cannot cut off millions of dollars in funding for desegregation programs in Little Rock-area school districts until a challenge to the payments gets a separate federal court hearing, an appeals court ruled yesterday. The ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit comes months after US District Judge Brian Miller ordered an end to most of the payments, calling them counterproductive. He accused three school districts of delaying desegregation to continue getting state money.

It is Boston's attempt at truth and reconciliation: a traveling documentary and community conversations that explore the pain and disappointment lingering nearly four decades after school busing sundered the city. The film, which premiered in the summer, and the ongoing discussions seek to give voice to lives ruptured 37 years ago when buses rumbled from one neighborhood to another. The social justice group presiding over the effort said it hopes the campaign persuades residents and leaders to reconsider why the promise of desegregation - a quality education for all - has...

When the music you've made since grade school has led you to concert stages around the world, and you've spent the past 40 years performing with the likes of Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Dave Matthews, Santana, and the Fugees, it can be tough to pinpoint the moment you first realized you'd made it big. So when the question is put to Leon Mobley - master percussionist, drummer for Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals, and proud Roxbury native -...

Every player in the National Basketball Association can count himself among the so-called 1 percent. For that, all of them, from superstars down to the most obscure scrubs and overpaid busts, owe a moment of silence to Robert L. Carter. As a young lawyer, Carter, who died earlier this month at 94, helped build the case for court-ordered school desegregation. Later, as a federal judge from New York, he set in motion another revolution when he took on a stalled antitrust lawsuit brought against the NBA by star Oscar Robertson and several other veteran players, including the...

ST. LOUIS - A decades-old battle over school desegregation in Little Rock, Ark., reached a federal appeals court yesterday as lawyers for schools involved in the case argued that a judge was wrong to cut off tens of millions of dollars in state funding for programs to achieve racial balance. The Eighth US Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis heard arguments from the Little Rock, North Little Rock, and Pulaski County Special school districts as well as the state of Arkansas, which argues that it shouldn't have to make the payments any longer.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - More than a half-century after federal troops escorted nine black students into an all-white school, efforts to desegregate Little Rock's classrooms are at another turning point. The state wants to end its long-running payments for desegregation programs, but three school districts that receive the money say they need it to continue key programs. And a federal judge has accused the schools of delaying desegregation so they can keep receiving an annual infusion of $70 million.