The Supreme Court's decision in Broad v. Board of Education in 1954, which declared the racial segregation of American schools unconstitutional, is universally understood as a landmark moment in our nation's history.

Yet looking back from the present day, we judge the integrationist dream post-Brown as an utter failure, in the belief that it harmed students and deepened racial divisions in our society. Though integration efforts continued into the 1980s, reaching a highpoint in 1988, since then we've reverted to a situation in which segregation-no longer de jure, but de facto-prevails. Was integration a social experiment doomed from the start?