FOR 16 painful years, the symbolic measure of racial progress in the U.S. has been the rate at which Southern school officials have stopped requiring black children to attend separate public schools. That gauge is too narrow, and may be unfair to the South, since the entire nation has failed the test. Now, finally, after more prodding from the Supreme Court, the last of the holdout school districts are under direct orders to desegregate. No one is certain just how they will react as Dixie's school bells signal the start of the new academic year, which in some cases will be...
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