Book Talk: Michelle Adams, The Containment
February 2 2025 | 2:00pm to 4:00pm
Michelle Adams, Henry M. Butzel Professor of Law at the University of Michigan and author of The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North, will be joined by Paul Dimond, Ann Arbor attorney and former Special Assistant to President Clinton for Economic Policy, in a conversation moderated by Peter J. Hammer, A. Alfred Taubman Endowed Chair at Wayne State University Law School. This discussion will delve into the 1974 Supreme Court case Milliken v. Bradley, which halted school desegregation efforts in the North, and examine its enduring impact on racial justice and educational equality in America.
In THE CONTAINMENT, the esteemed legal scholar Michelle Adams tells the epic story of the struggle to integrate Detroit schools—and what happened when it collided with Nixon appointed justices committed to a judicial counterrevolution. Adams chronicles the devoted activists who tried to uplift Detroit's students amid the upheavals of riots, Black power, and white flight—and how their efforts led to federal judge Stephen Roth’s landmark order to achieve racial balance by tearing down the walls separating the city and its suburbs. The “metropolitan remedy” could have remade the landscape of racial justice. Instead, the Supreme Court ruled that the suburbs could not be a part of the effort to integrate—and thus upheld the inequalities that remain in place today.
Adams tells this story via compelling portraits of a city under stress and of key figures— including Detroit’s first Black mayor, Coleman Young, and Justices Marshall, Rehnquist, and Powell. The result is a legal and historical drama that exposes the roots of today’s backlash against affirmative action and other efforts to fulfill the country's promise.
Michelle Adams is the Henry M. Butzel Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. The former codirector of the Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, she served on the Biden administration’s Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court and as an expert commentator on the Netflix series Amend: The Fight for America and the Showtime series Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court. Her writings have appeared in The New Yorker, The Yale Law Journal, California Law Review, and elsewhere. She was born and grew up in Detroit.
Paul Dimond served as the Director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law, tried several major race cases that challenged a divided Supreme Court, became a Professor Law, and served as Special Assistant to President Clinton for Economic Policy. He has also practiced law, chaired a national real estate firm and continues to spend his time between his two Arbors. Currently, he works on behalf of several non-profits in Michigan so the heart of the Great Lakes can once again become a thriving home for fresh water and fresh ideas. He is the author of numerous articles and three books on policy, law and history, including Beyond Busing, recipient of the Ralph J. Bunche Book of the Year in 1986, as well as the author of three novels. He is an alumnus of Amherst College and the University of Michigan Law School.
Peter J. Hammer was named the A. Alfred Taubman Endowed Chair at Wayne State University Law School in fall 2018. Hammer has taught at Wayne Law since 2003 and is the director of the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights. Hammer was instrumental in editing and compiling Judge Damon J. Keith’s biography, Crusader for Justice: Federal Judge Damon J. Keith (2013). Hammer has become a leading voice on the economic and social issues impacting the city of Detroit. Hammer has expertise in the fields of domestic health law and policy, as well as international public health and economic development. His scholarship also has examined the role of global health initiatives in health system development and how international law might further the objectives of global child health.
Professor Adams will be present before the talk to sign copies of her book, which will be available for purchase.
Free with registration (included in museum admission).
Presented in partnership with Source Booksellers and the Michigan American Constitution Society Lawyer Chapter.
