ABSTRACT
In 1958, Vivian Calhoun and eight other parents of black school-age children sued to compel the desegregation of Atlanta's public school system. For the next fourteen years the legal struggle between the plaintiffs, represented by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Atlanta Board of Education, kept the suit in the federal courts, and the policies of the board kept the schools almost as segregated as they were in 1958. On October 6, 1972, the federal appeals court, meeting in New Orleans, ordered the board to submit a comprehensive integration plan within a month. The court insisted on the integration of the city school system by the start of its second six-week school term on November 27.
