ABSTRACT
This chapter explores one possible means of neglect—the failure to raise money for desegregated schools—in a sample of school districts in Mississippi. Substantial school desegregation occurred in Mississippi schools only after more than a decade of intense efforts to obtain civil rights for blacks on a number of fronts. By 1970 southern schools were the most desegregated in the United States, but this status was achieved in spite of a variety of obstacles placed in the movement's path by white southerners. The chapter attempts to explain variation in changes in school finance in Mississippi school districts attendant to the desegregation process. The model outlined is evaluated using data for the 1968-69 and 1972-73 school years from a sample of seventy-four public school districts drawn from across Mississippi. Desegregation precipitated fiscal policy changes for the public schools in Mississippi, changes that are negative for the schools and the students enrolled in them.
