Up until 1965, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools were still segregated. In efforts to desegregate one of the nation's largest and most diverse school systems, a case was brought to the courts by the NAACP on behalf of Rev. Darius Swann and his wife, Vera, who had been missionaries in India and had returned to Charlotte.

 

The school closest to the Swanns' home in Charlotte was Seversville, a school with 297 white students and 26 black students. The school contended Swanns' son should be assigned to Biddleville, an all-black school. The Swanns contended that children were able to “transfer out of integrated schools, but not allowed to transfer into them and that the law should be equally binding…otherwise, the law is discriminatory.”

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The suit alleged: Some dual school zones remained in operation, creating essentially black and white school districts side by side. Compounding the problem, the Board of Education permitted transfers out of integrated schools but discouraged transfers into the schools. In addition, most school faculties were completely segregated.

 

Judge Braxton Craven ruled in favor of the Board of Education, saying it had shown clear intent and had made steady progress toward ending a policy of segregated schools. At the time, only 2,126 of the district's 23,000 black students attended school with white students, and 66 of Charlotte’s 109 schools were entirely segregated. Craven's ruling also ordered immediate desegregation of staff and faculty.

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James McMillan, the Federal District judge in the case, ruled in favor of the Swanns and oversaw the implementation of a busing strategy that integrated the district’s schools. McMillan’s decision was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld it. The busing strategy was adopted elsewhere in the United States and played an instrumental role in integrating U.S. public schools

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Yet, even after the ruling was in favor of desegregation, the district failed to implement effective strategies to desegregate all Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. The board first drafted a new desegregation plan. The new plan relied on school zone gerrymandering to desegregate but left large numbers of African American students in all-black or nearly all-black schools. In efforts to asisst Charlotte in desegregating schools, a federal district court enlisted an expert, Dr. John Finger, to produce an alternative desegregation plan. Finger’s plan called for the busing of African American elementary school students in Charlotte to suburban schools. It also recommended that fifth- and sixth-grade students from suburban Mecklenburg County be bused to schools in Charlotte. Although the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board adopted the Finger plan, it asserted that the plan was unreasonable.

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Regardless of all efforts to desegregate such a large, diverse school system, excuses were constantly made. It wasn't until September 9th, 1999 that Federal District Court Judge Robert Potter ordered the district to stop using race or ethnicity in pupil assignments.

 

On April 15, 2002, the United States Supreme Court announced that it would not revisit the Swann/Cappachione cases and related petitions, allowing the Fourth Circuit's approval of the district's student-assignment plan to stand. The decision effectively closed the Swann case, ending segregation amongst the Charlotte- Mecklenburg school system.