At stake is the course for the state's university system, which retains vestiges of official segregation.

The Supreme Court, the civil rights movement and Congress ended official segregation and the exclusion of blacks from the political process in the South.

It took decades of marches and lawsuits to eradicate official segregation.

This group of laws and policies, known as redlining, lasted until the 1950s, and fall under the concept of official segregation.

By 1973 Drew's public schools were four-fifths black, and for all practical purposes the old racial order had adapted from official segregation to nominal freedom.

Most of the South's improvement occurred after 1960, around the time the civil rights movement ended official segregation.

Memories of official segregation were very much alive.

The Justices will decide whether the state is required by either the Constitution or Federal civil rights law to do more than end official segregation.

The Court has agreed that in its next term it will decide two important cases involving the legacy of official segregation.

University officials say decades of official segregation in Maryland and then indifference to integration have led to the underrepresentation of blacks in higher education.