
The Containment
Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North
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Narrated by:
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Janina Edwards
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By:
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Michelle Adams
About this listen
“Janina Edwards narrates in a compelling tone, a vivid style, and a clear sense of the importance of this action.”—AudioFile
The epic story of Detroit's struggle to integrate schools in its suburbs—and the defeat of desegregation in the North.
In 1974, the Supreme Court issued a momentous decision: In the case of Milliken v. Bradley, the justices brought a halt to school desegregation across the North, and to the civil rights movement’s struggle for a truly equal education for all. How did this come about, and why?
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.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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Critic reviews
“Michelle Adams has written a truly beautiful, intimate, and powerful history of ordinary Detroiters’ determined fight to finally ensure equality of opportunity for Black children. As she makes painfully clear, the educational and residential segregation that came to devastate the country thereafter was not at all inevitable. It was an active choice and a legal betrayal on the part of too many Americans who were on the wrong side of history but whose short-sightedness might yet be undone.”—Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy
“It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when the federal courts were committed to the pursuit of racial justice. In her mesmerizing new book, Michelle Adams re-creates the landmark case that shattered that commitment. The Containment is a history you have to read to understand the nation we’ve become.”—Kevin Boyle, National Book Award-winning author of Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age
"Michelle Adams has written the definitive history of Milliken v. Bradley, one of the most important Supreme Court cases of all time. Deeply researched and beautifully written, The Containment fundamentally changes how we understand the history of civil rights. This page-turner illuminates how battles over school desegregation shaped cities and suburbs, and explains why issues like affirmative action remain political battlegrounds today."—Matthew F. Delmont, Distinguished Professor of History at Dartmouth and author of Half American: The Heroic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad
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- Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War
- By: Dr. Edda L. Fields-Black
- Narrated by: Machelle Williams
- Length: 25 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of the Combahee River Raid, one of Harriet Tubman's most extraordinary accomplishments, based on original documents and written by a descendant of one of the participants: Edda L. Fields-Black shows how Tubman commanded a ring of spies, scouts, and pilots and participated in military expeditions behind Confederate lines. On June 2, 1863, Tubman and her crew piloted two regiments of Black US Army soldiers, the Second South Carolina Volunteers, and their white commanders up coastal South Carolina's Combahee River in three gunboats.
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Bringing the forgotten to life
- By GAT on 07-16-24
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Plundered
- How Racist Policies Undermine Black Homeownership in America
- By: Bernadette Atuahene
- Narrated by: Amir Abdullah
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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When Professor Bernadette Atuahene moved to Detroit, she planned to study the city’s squatting phenomenon. What she accidentally found was too urgent to ignore. Her neighbors, many of whom had owned their homes for decades, were losing them to property tax foreclosure, leaving once bustling Black neighborhoods blighted with vacant homes. Through years of dogged investigation and research, Atuahene uncovered a system of predatory governance, where public officials raise public dollars through laws and processes that produce or sustain racial inequity.
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Remarkable study
- By Sudsbren on 03-30-25
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Lawless
- How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes
- By: Leah Litman
- Narrated by: Leah Litman
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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With the gravitas of Joan Biskupic and the irreverence of Elie Mystal, Leah Litman brings her signature wit to the question of what’s gone wrong at One First Street. In Lawless, she argues that the Supreme Court is no longer practicing law; it’s running on vibes. By “vibes,” Litman means legal-ish claims that repackage the politics of conservative grievance and dress them up in robes. Major decisions adopt the language and posture of the law, while in fact displaying a commitment to protecting a single minority: the religious conservatives and Republican officials.
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Wonderful book, may leave you depressed and defeated
- By David Romero on 06-18-25
By: Leah Litman
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To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause
- The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement
- By: Benjamin Nathans
- Narrated by: Rich Miller
- Length: 23 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Beginning in the 1960s, the Soviet Union was unexpectedly confronted by a dissident movement that captured the world’s imagination. Demanding that the Kremlin obey its own laws, an improbable band of Soviet citizens held unauthorized public gatherings, petitioned in support of arrested intellectuals, and circulated banned samizdat texts. Against all odds, the dissident movement undermined the Soviet system and unexpectedly hastened its collapse. To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause is a definitive history of a remarkable group of people who helped change the twentieth century.
By: Benjamin Nathans
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The Determined Spy
- The Turbulent Life and Times of CIA Pioneer Frank Wisner
- By: Douglas Waller
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 19 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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An intimate and expertly researched biography of little-known early CIA leader Frank Wisner, whose behind-the-scenes influence on Cold War policy—and hundreds of highly secret anti-Soviet missions—resonates with the international crises we see today.
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Essential For Understanding The Cold War
- By Demetrius Walker on 05-13-25
By: Douglas Waller
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Stay True
- A Memoir
- By: Hua Hsu
- Narrated by: Hua Hsu
- Length: 5 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In the eyes of eighteen-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken—with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity—is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, who makes ’zines and haunts Bay Area record shops, Ken represents all that he defines himself in opposition to. The only thing Hua and Ken have in common is that, however they engage with it, American culture doesn’t seem to have a place for either of them.
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At the end, this book is about friendships
- By rosalinda lam on 10-31-22
By: Hua Hsu
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Stone Yard Devotional
- A Novel
- By: Charlotte Wood
- Narrated by: Ailsa Piper
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of rural Australia. She doesn't believe in God, or know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive existence almost by accident.
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A profound inward journey
- By Kathlene barrett on 02-17-25
By: Charlotte Wood
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The Director
- By: Daniel Kehlmann
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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G.W. Pabst, one of cinema’s greatest directors of the 20th century, was filming in France when the Nazis seized power. To escape the horrors of the new and unrecognizable Germany, he fled to Hollywood. But now, under the blinding California sun, the world-famous director suddenly looks like a nobody. Not even Greta Garbo, the Hollywood actress whom he made famous, can help him. When he receives word that his elderly mother is ill, he finds himself back in his homeland of Austria, which is now called Ostmark.
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The sharpness of the story, utterly convincing characters, and the moral focus
- By hans sandberg on 06-13-25
By: Daniel Kehlmann
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Melting Point
- Family, Memory, and the Search for a Promised Land
- By: Rachel Cockerell
- Narrated by: Henry Goodman, Rachel Cockerell
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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In a highly inventive style, Cockerell captures history as it unfolds, weaving together letters, diaries, memoirs, newspaper articles, and interviews into a vivid account. Melting Point follows Zangwill and the Jochelmann family through two world wars, to London, New York, and Jerusalem—as their lives intertwine with some of the most memorable figures of the twentieth century, and each chooses whether to cling to their history or melt into their new surroundings. It is a story that asks what it means to belong, and what can be salvaged from the past.
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Tasting history unfolding....
- By BUYERAmazon on 06-03-25
By: Rachel Cockerell
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Yoko
- The Biography
- By: David Sheff
- Narrated by: Max Meyers
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Yoko’s life, independent of Lennon, was an amazing journey. Yoko spans from her birth to wealthy parents in pre-war Tokyo, her harrowing experience as a child during the war, her arrival in avant-garde art scene in London, Tokyo, and New York City. It delves into her groundbreaking art, music, feminism, and activism. We see how she coped under the most intense, relentless, and cynical microscope as she was falsely vilified for the most heinous cultural crime imaginable: breaking up the greatest rock-and-roll band in history.
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Great Book, Horrible Narrator
- By Mg on 03-28-25
By: David Sheff
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Heartwood
- By: Amity Gaige
- Narrated by: Justine Lupe, Alma Cuervo, Rebecca Lowman, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping. At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground.
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The suspense
- By Amy B. McVey on 04-11-25
By: Amity Gaige
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The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
- By: Stephen Graham Jones
- Narrated by: Shane Ghostkeeper, Marin Ireland, Owen Teale
- Length: 15 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran Pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.
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SGJ blows readers away again again
- By D. Evert on 03-20-25
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Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza
- A Reckoning
- By: Peter Beinart
- Narrated by: Peter Beinart
- Length: 3 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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In Peter Beinart’s view, one story dominates Jewish communal life: that of persecution and victimhood. It is a story that erases much of the nuance of Jewish religious tradition and warps our understanding of Israel and Palestine. After Gaza, where Jewish texts, history, and language have been deployed to justify mass slaughter and starvation, Beinart argues, Jews must tell a new story. After this war, whose horror will echo for generations, they must do nothing less than offer a new answer to the question: What does it mean to be a Jew?
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Profound
- By Michael Halpern on 02-09-25
By: Peter Beinart
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We Do Not Part
- A Novel
- By: Han Kang, E. Yaewon - translator, Paige Aniyah Morris - translator
- Narrated by: Greta Jung
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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One winter morning, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her at a hospital in Seoul. Inseon has injured herself in an accident, and she begs Kyungha to return to Jeju Island, where she lives, to save her beloved pet—a white bird called Ama. A snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon’s house at all costs, but the icy wind and squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save the animal—or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step.
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Powerful, Tough Listen
- By ncnickle on 01-26-25
By: Han Kang, and others
Revealing an important part of US History
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The focus is on the pivotal Milliken v. Bradley, the famous metro-wide school desegregation case/plan. Knew lots of the history, but not at this level of detail. And it has reminded me of how, at least with the post-Warren court, SCOTUS has been a force that has often supported systemic racism. Judge Roth tried to push back in Detroit, but SCOTUS undid his attempt.
I also appreciate how the author draws on her Detroit roots. She grew up in a neighborhood about a mile from the one I did, about the same time (60s/70s).
Critical history of what should have been.
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Very informative
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