By Stacy M. Brown, BlackPressUSA.com Senior National Correspondent
The Trump administration has ended a decades-old federal school desegregation order in Louisiana, the latest move in what legal experts and historians describe as a methodical dismantling of civil rights protections under the Project 2025 blueprint. Announced Tuesday, the Department of Justice declared the 1966 court-enforced desegregation decree involving Plaquemines Parish schools no longer necessary. Officials dismissed the long-standing order as a “historical wrong” and used its termination to signal that other civil rights-era mandates may soon be repealed. “We are getting America refocused on our bright future,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said. The Justice Department and Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill filed a joint motion stating, “The parties are satisfied that the United States’ claims have been fully resolved.” Officials said that the district was declared integrated in 1975, but the court never formally closed the case, and records have since vanished.
Trump’s second term has unfolded in lockstep with Project 2025, a hardline conservative roadmap that calls for purging the government of diversity programs, civil rights enforcement, and what it calls “woke ideology.” Within days of taking office, Trump signed an executive order eliminating all chief diversity officers in the federal government, terminating racial equity contracts, and halting programs intended to remove discriminatory barriers. He has revoked the 1965 executive order on equal employment opportunity, cut funding to minority and women-owned businesses, and frozen grants focused on racial disparities in health care. The administration has labeled DEI efforts “immoral” and, in one executive action, accused cultural institutions of promoting “national shame.” Diversity itself, officials now say, is a “curse word.” Inside the Justice Department, appointees have privately discussed withdrawing from other desegregation orders, calling them an outdated burden on schools, according to a source familiar with the conversations. Yet dozens of districts across the South remain under court supervision to ensure racial integration—a legacy of the government’s post-Brown v. Board of Education enforcement.
Civil rights advocates argue these agreements remain vital because segregation was never fully dismantled. However, officials aligned with Trump insist that the consent decrees are relics that have outlived their purpose. Historians say the administration’s actions extend beyond legal rollbacks and into aggressively reengineering American memory. Trump has criticized the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, accusing it of portraying Western culture as “inherently harmful.” Some government websites briefly removed references to Harriet Tubman and other Black historical figures before restoring them under public pressure. “It’s not just about erasing DEI. It’s about reshaping how this country sees itself,” said Lawrence Rosenthal, chair of the Center for Right-Wing Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. “Project 2025 replaces the institutions of democracy with a loyalty test to one authoritarian vision.”
Meanwhile, research continues to show the lasting power of desegregation. A new report from the National Bureau of Economic Research followed Black children relocated under Chicago’s 1966 Gautreaux program. Those who moved to predominantly White neighborhoods earned up to $34,000 more by age 38, were more likely to be homeowners, and lived in communities with lower poverty. The benefits were most pronounced for children who moved at younger ages. “How on earth can you teach about Rosa Parks without talking about racism?” asked Mark Bray, a civil rights scholar at Rutgers University. “This is an attempt to rewrite the past—and in doing so, control the future.”
