This week, the U.S. Department of Justice quietly closed the book on one of Louisiana’s longest-standing school desegregation orders—first issued in 1966 to Plaquemines Parish, a place whose history of racial exclusion was once so notorious it had a name: Leander Perez. The DOJ framed the decision as “correcting a historical wrong.” But let’s call it what it is: another federally sanctioned retreat from the unfinished business of civil rights.
Plaquemines Parish wasn’t just segregated by policy—it was held hostage by white supremacy. Perez ran it like a private fiefdom, using schools as one of his sharpest tools for keeping Black families second-class. That’s the context behind the original order, issued after years of delay, denial, and federal intervention. Now, nearly 60 years later, the Justice Department is calling that protection an outdated relic. And it’s not just Plaquemines. Dozens of other desegregation orders across the South are quietly being dismantled, often without any meaningful input from the communities they’re supposed to serve.
According to the DOJ’s own court filing, the Plaquemines school district was deemed “unitary”—or fully integrated—as early as 1975. But ask the families in the parish, and you’ll hear a different story. What does “unitary” mean when schools remain racially and economically divided by neighborhood, by access to resources, by discipline policies, and by opportunity? What happens when white flight is replaced by school choice, and segregation simply re-emerges with new labels?
We’ve been here before. In 2007, the Supreme Court’s decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 effectively gutted the ability of districts to voluntarily maintain integration. Since then, resegregation has accelerated. According to research from the UCLA Civil Rights Project, Black and Latino students today are more likely to attend majority-minority schools than they were in the late 1960s. These schools often have fewer AP courses, less experienced teachers, crumbling facilities, and the constant churn of underfunded “turnaround” plans.
When we erase federal oversight—especially in a place like Plaquemines Parish—we don’t erase inequality. We legalize it.
And remember—segregation wasn’t just about physical buildings. It was about denying children access to networks of power, safety, and success. Segregation starved Black schools of funding and then blamed students for the consequences. That legacy didn’t vanish when a court declared a district compliant. It lives on in standardized test gaps, in resource disparities, in who gets suspended and who gets a counselor.
Calling a desegregation order “a historical wrong” is a dangerous sleight of hand. It suggests that federal enforcement itself was the injustice—not the racism that made enforcement necessary. It lets districts off the hook without having to prove they’re actually delivering an equal education. And it sends a message to the next generation of Black and Brown students that their rights are conditional, their futures negotiable, and their history disposable.
Louisiana’s Department of Education should be demanding transparency, not celebrating autonomy. Local leaders should be asking how many students in Plaquemines Parish—especially Black students—still lack access to honors programs, extracurriculars, or safe transportation. But that kind of audit won’t happen now that the DOJ has washed its hands.
In New Orleans, we know what happens when oversight dies quietly. We’ve lived through “choice” systems that favor the already-connected. We’ve seen how integration on paper rarely translates to justice in practice. And we’ve seen how quickly gains can vanish when no one is watching.
This is a warning shot, not a legal technicality.
And if we don’t respond with organizing, journalism, and with public outrage, then Plaquemines Parish won’t be the exception. It will be the template.
