Now, they hope their work will in turn inspire others to create similar projects all around the country.

Michelle Landry, who graduated in December, and 2L Victoria Pedri were particularly struck by excerpts from Adams’s new book, The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North. 

The book explores Milliken v. Bradley, the Detroit school desegregation case “that ended the Brown v. Board of Education era,” as Adams says, by allowing government-supported segregation to continue.

“School segregation is something you can see when you’re growing up,” Landry said. “To not only read about that and relate to it, but to hear all our fellow students who had similar experiences, was really powerful and made me see that more could be done in the realm of advocacy on this subject.”

“We felt very moved by the book excerpt that [Adams] had shared, and we asked to read more of it,” Pedri recalled. “A lot of law school experiences focus on legal research and history—the traditional academia—which makes sense. But we wanted to do something a little bit more than that, connecting the research to real-life events and getting it out to people.”

Their initial concept was an interactive map that would highlight the history of segregation across the United States, as well as actionable suggestions on improving conditions today. That proved to be too ambitious, so they refocused on a detailed digital timeline of school integration efforts in Detroit.

“They took my book, and they added other existing sources, and they built out this amazing, beautiful digital timeline that gives the history of Detroit and school segregation, including some events that are outside of the book,” Adams said.