The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North

Professor Michelle Adams describes the struggles to integrate Detroit’s highly segregated neighborhoods and schools in the 1960s, a federal judge’s ruling to alleviate that segregation by bussing students between the predominately Black schools in Detroit and predominantly white schools in the suburbs, and the Supreme Court’s subsequent 1974 Milliken v. Bradley decision that acknowledged the segregated state of Detroit schools but overturned the “metropolitan remedy,” thereby allowing de facto school segregation to persist today. Adams is the Henry M. Butzel Professor of Law at the University of Michigan and author of The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North . Related Resources: The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North Related Collections: Robert E. DeMascio Papers (LP002075) Detroit Board of Education Detroit Public Schools Records (WSR000681) Detroit Public Schools Community Relations Division Records (LR000951) Damon J. Keith Papers (UP001582) NAACP Detroit Branch Records (UR000244) Remus Robinson Papers (UP000447) Wayne State University College of Education, Dean’s Office: Detroit Public Schools Monitoring Commission on Desegregation Records (WSR001371) Coleman Young Papers (UP000449) Episode Credits Interviewee: Michelle Adams Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English Music: Bart Bealmear

You can listen to The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North is an episode from Tales from the Reuther Library by Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University.

This episode is 54:09 long.

This episode was published on Nov 17, 2025.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Tales from the Reuther Library when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.