When the Supreme Court validated it on appeal, Swann had been in litigation since 1965, filed by Charlotte, North Carolina attorney Julius L. Chambers for parents Darius and Vera Swann. They petitioned that their son James be assigned to Seversville Elementary School, which was integrated and the closest school to his home.

But the city dragged in desegregation. It also missed the lessons of Green v. County Board of New Kent County (1968) and Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education (1969), Virginia and Mississippi decisions, respectively, which invalidated “freedom of choice” student assignments and required “only unitary schools.” Yet, when Chambers reargued Swann in 1969, two-thirds of the city's 21,000 black students attended schools that were predominantly or entirely black. Accordingly, the Federal District Court obtained an expert to propose an integration plan. His proposal would pair schools, integrate grades 1–3 and 4–6, redraw attendance zones, and bus students. Even so, the Supreme Court considered it “administratively awkward, inconvenient and even bizarre in some situations.” In 1971, announcing the need to end school segregation urgent, the Court ordered student busing to create a unitary system. Busing thus became the Court's most effective, if legally contested, method for desegregating schools.