Were school voucher programs used to evade integration after Brown v. Board of Education?

Several Southern states established school voucher programs to evade integration in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that deemed race-based segregation in public schools unconstitutional. 

Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman helped popularize the idea of using government funding to provide vouchers for private schooling in a landmark essay in 1955, the same year the Court issued the Brown II ruling ordering integration. He suggested vouchers would foster competition and offer parents improved school choice.

Milton acknowledged the implications for desegregation efforts in the footnotes of his piece, writing that although he personally “deplored” segregation, the strength of the voucher system was that “there can develop exclusively white schools, exclusively colored schools, and mixed schools. Parents can choose which to send their children to.”

Virginia took the lead in implementing a voucher program in 1956, with enrollment in whites-only private schools accelerating as others followed suit. 

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