The Milwaukee branch of the NAACP joined in a lawsuit to block implementation of Wisconsin's new school-choice program, which would give up to 15,000 poor children educational vouchers to spend at a wide array of private schools. Ninety-six percent of the students participating in the program are minorities, and the Milwaukee Community Journal finds that 90 percent of the black community supports the program.

Nevertheless, the NAACP argued that school choice violates the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, comparing the voucher program to efforts of southern whites to thumb their noses at desegregation efforts by sending their kids to private schools. According to the NAACP, some of the parents using vouchers choose to send their children to "virtually one-race schools," and "racially separate schools are inherently unequal."

[Ed.: Only 35 percent of the freshmen who entered public high schools in 1992 graduated in four years—in one school, only 13 percent did so. But for two predominantly black private schools in Milwaukee—Messmer High School, an independent Catholic school, and Urban Day, a K-8 independent school—the graduation rate is 98 percent.]

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