Book Talk | Michelle Adams: The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North

Join the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law and the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center for a powerful in-person conversation on Thursday, September 4, 2025, with legal scholar Michelle Adams as she discusses her groundbreaking new book, The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North.

In The Containment, Michelle Adams explores a pivotal but often overlooked chapter in the history of school desegregation. In 1974, the Supreme Court delivered a momentous decision in Milliken v. Bradley, effectively halting desegregation efforts in the North and stalling the civil rights movement’s push for truly equal education. 

Adams tells the epic story of the struggle to integrate Detroit’s public schools and the collision of that effort with Nixon-era justices determined to reverse progress. Chronicling the efforts of activists, public officials, and judges, particularly Judge Stephen Roth, who issued a bold “metropolitan remedy” order to integrate city and suburban schools, Adams reveals how the Supreme Court’s ruling upheld educational inequalities that still persist today. Through compelling portraits of a city in crisis and key figures like Detroit’s first Black mayor Coleman Young and Justices Marshall, Rehnquist, and Powell, The Containment presents a legal and historical drama that illuminates the deep roots of today’s backlash against affirmative action and racial justice.

The conversation will be moderated by Melissa Murray, Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law at NYU School of Law.

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