Overview

Winner of the MAAH Stone Book Award Winner of the 2025 Avern Cohn Award A New York Times Notable Book of 2025, A New Yorker Best Book of 2025 selection A Christian Science Monitor 25 Best Books of 2025 The epic story of Detroit's struggle to integrate schools in its suburbs--and the defeat of desegregation in the North. In 1974, the Supreme Court issued a momentous decision: In the case of Milliken v. Bradley, the justices brought a halt to school desegregation across the North, and to the civil rights movement's struggle for a truly equal education for all. How did this come about, and why? In The Containment, the esteemed legal scholar Michelle Adams tells the epic story of the struggle to integrate Detroit schools--and what happened when it collided with Nixon-appointed justices committed to a judicial counterrevolution. Adams chronicles the devoted activists who tried to uplift Detroit's students amid the upheavals of riots, Black power, and white flight--and how their efforts led to federal judge Stephen Roth's landmark order to achieve racial balance by tearing down the walls separating the city and its suburbs. The ""metropolitan remedy"" could have remade the landscape of racial justice. Instead, the Supreme Court ruled that the suburbs could not be a part of the effort to integrate--and thus upheld the inequalities that remain in place today. Adams tells this story via compelling portraits of a city under stress and of key figures--including Detroit's first Black mayor, Coleman Young, and Justices Marshall, Rehnquist, and Powell. The result is a legal and historical drama that exposes the roots of today's backlash against affirmative action and other efforts to fulfill the country's promise.

Full Product Details

9780374250423

Table of Contents

Reviews

"""The lawless Milliken decision was a turning point in American history. It stopped rapid progress toward an integrated society and gave us the segregated, polarized nation we have today. Finally, here is a brilliant analysis of this monumental case, set in a richly compelling historical context, by a leading constitutional scholar."" --Myron Orfield, Earl R. Larson Professor of Civil Rights at the University of Minnesota Law School"

""In this comprehensive and well-documented history, legal scholar and Detroit native Adams brings the issues and people surrounding the case to life and explains its ongoing impact."" --Booklist ""Michelle Adams has written the definitive history of Milliken v. Bradley, one of the most important Supreme Court cases of all time. Deeply researched and beautifully written, The Containment fundamentally changes how we understand the history of civil rights. This page-turner illuminates how battles over school desegregation shaped cities and suburbs, and explains why issues like affirmative action remain political battlegrounds today."" --Matthew F. Delmont, Distinguished Professor of History at Dartmouth and author of Half American: The Heroic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad ""The lawless Milliken decision was a turning point in American history. It stopped rapid progress toward an integrated society and gave us the segregated, polarized nation we have today. Finally, here is a brilliant analysis of this monumental case, set in a richly compelling historical context, by a leading constitutional scholar."" --Myron Orfield, Earl R. Larson Professor of Civil Rights at the University of Minnesota Law School

Author Information

Michelle Adams is the Henry M. Butzel Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. The former codirector of the Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, she served on the Biden administration's Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court and as an expert commentator on the Netflix series Amend: The Fight for America and the Showtime series Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court. Her writings have appeared in The New Yorker, The Yale Law Journal, California Law Review, and elsewhere. She was born and grew up in Detroit.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available