It was the turn of the millennium, and the schools in North Carolina’s Wake County had a problem.
Like many other school systems in the South that started desegregation efforts in the 1970s, they had long bused students from their neighborhoods to schools around Raleigh, the state capital.
Race-based busing was unpopular. But the county remained stubbornly segregated by neighborhood, so ending the system entirely would have meant a return to unequal schools…