The national media are celebrating Nashville for new levels of inclusion within country music, with Darius Rucker winning CMA trophies last week on a glitzy night at the Sommet Center. But a few blocks up Broadway inside the federal courthouse, a starkly different image of race relations is unveiling before a handful of spectators.Attorneys backed by the NAACP are accusing the Metro school board of discriminating against black children with a new student assignment plan that ended the last vestige of cross-town busing in this city—a 45-minute ride from North Nashville to Hillwood. White public officials—all pillars of the community—have been forced to take the witness stand to defend themselves, denying their goal was to rid the white suburbs of black children from the housing projects. They strongly insist that the plan is meant to benefit working families, to provide choice while keeping community resources within each neighborhood.

The hearing, only now nearing an end after three weeks, has featured charges and counter-charges and bewildering he-said/she-said testimony, leaving U.S. District Judge John Nixon to sort it all out. The lawsuit asks Nixon to overturn the rezoning plan and order the school board to develop a new one that's acceptable to both sides by next summer. To win, the plaintiffs—three black families—have to prove race was a motivating factor in the school board's action. The board voted 5-4 for the plan after a contentious meeting in July 2008.

For the plaintiffs, expert witnesses have testified that the plan—which has added hundreds of black students to already heavily black schools—isolates students by race and socioeconomic status and contradicts decades of social science on how to teach poor urban children. That research shows that students learn less in schools where poverty is concentrated. There, according to the witnesses' testimony, teachers are overwhelmed by all the problems these children face—poor health, hunger, drugs, gangs and violence, and a culture that scorns education.

Poor students learn more in middle-class settings where aspirations are higher and the teachers typically are more experienced, the witnesses said. Neighborhood schools actually hinder learning for children in poverty-stricken, high-crime sections of the city.

If so, why did the school board adopt the rezoning plan? The plaintiffs insist they know the answer: White school board members were knuckling under to pressure from white parents and the Chamber of Commerce to end cross-town busing.

To prove their theory, they've presented testimony about a memorandum from former superintendent Pedro Garcia in which he claims he was intimidated and finally forced out of office for opposing a secret white conspiracy to resegregate schools.

Also according to one witness, angry white Hillwood parents used racial slurs while pressuring school board member Alan Coverstone to end busing. Won Choi, co-chair of the NAACP's education committee, testified about his conversations with Coverstone, who represented Hillwood just after the rezoning plan was approved. Choi said he tried to persuade Coverstone to support delaying the plan. But Coverstone said "that would mean that he would no longer be a board member, that he would be voted out," Choi testified.

"He said that I wouldn't believe the type of conversation that he has to have with his constituents, that on several occasions he would have angry constituents who would come up to him using the N-word and other derogatory terms about African-American students that had to be bused to the Hillwood cluster," Choi said.

Metro Council member Jerry Maynard testified about his private conversation with Chamber President Ralph Schulz. It took place at an airport on a Chamber-sponsored trip to a Miami conference. Maynard testified Schulz said the rezoning plan aimed to remove children living in housing projects from Hillwood's schools because they "do not share the same values" of parents in the white suburbs.

Witnesses also testified about a closed-door meeting in which state Rep. Mike Turner, an Old Hickory Democrat, urged black leaders to accept the rezoning plan. The meeting included Schulz, who has repeatedly denied any involvement in the plan. In defending it, Turner fondly recalled his boyhood days attending segregated schools in Nashville, these witnesses said. Turner was a member of the community task force that recommended the plan to the school board.

"I was dumbfounded," said Walter Searcy, an NAACP official.

Coverstone and Schulz have declined public comment. Turner says his remarks were taken out of context and, indeed, some witnesses said they thought he was engaging in innocent reminiscence.

"Sorta reminds me of what Yogi Berra used to say," Nixon joked at one point during the testimony. "Nostalgia just ain't what it used to be."

For their side, school board members say that, far from any racial intent, their main motivation was to give North Nashville parents a choice between putting their children on buses to Hillwood or sending them to schools closer to home. Of the 1,526 north Nashville students zoned last year for Hillwood's schools, 1,094 have chosen to go to schools closer to home, according to the school district. The district is providing transportation to students who choose Hillwood's schools.

The case may turn on whether Nixon believes the testimony of board member Mark North, perhaps the key witness. The son of Steve and JoAnn North, two longtime Nashville political figures, he chaired the rezoning task force.

In contrast with the conniving neo-segregationist of the plaintiffs' caricature, North cast himself as a dedicated public servant with a distaste for politics. He said he had to be talked into running for the board. Then-Mayor Bill Purcell came to his law office to personally twist his arm, North said. He said he didn't even know how much money he raised in his '08 campaign, although he did remember taking $5,000 from the Chamber of Commerce's political action committee.

North said Garcia was removed from office for doing a poor job, not for opposing the rezoning plan. Garcia, who presided over the district as schools failed student achievement standards for five straight years, was refusing to cooperate with state education officials who were trying to force improvements, North said.

North said that before Garcia fought rezoning, he was trying to cut deals to pass a plan. Garcia offered at one point not to shut down one school in North's district in return for his support, North said. Later, Garcia tried to close two schools in North's district to stop him from raising questions about the plan, North said.

"He was playing politics with me," North testified. "... The message he was sending me was, 'Don't ask questions,' and that made me mad."

To help make up his mind about rezoning, North testified he rode a school bus with North Nashville's children on their way home one sunny autumn day. He described one girl, who helped him find a seat on the bus, as "the sweetest child I ever saw" and said he read aloud to the students from their library books during the ride.

"This was an important event for me," he said.

He said he learned the bus ride "wasn't torture. It wasn't the worst thing that ever happened." And he said, "I was convinced that for some of the children on that bus, it was a good thing" to attend school in the white suburbs. "And I was also convinced that I wasn't sure it was best for some children. And there was also probably no way for me to tell which was which. It raised questions for me."

He said he later became convinced the way to handle the issue was to allow parents to choose which schools their children will attend.

"Choice is empowering," he said. "Choice gives the power to parents."

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