It’s been 70 years since Brown v. Board of Education. The US is still trying to achieve the promise of integration.

The landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling may have paved the way for more equal and integrated schools, but fierce – and continued – opposition to integration means the ruling in no way assured the end of segregated education in the United States.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas – the landmark Supreme Court decision that declared “separate but equal” education unconstitutional in the United States – remains one of the most consequential court cases in American history. As the nation commemorates the ruling’s 70th anniversary, civil rights leaders and advocates tell CNN the case may have paved the way for more equal and integrated schools, but fierce – and continued – opposition to integration means the ruling in no way assured the end of segregated education in the United States. Although progress has undoubtedly been made over the decades, research shows many school districts today are racially segregated because they are divided along residential and economic lines. At times, federal courts have intervened, ordering some school districts to execute plans to integrate Black and Latino students with their White counterparts to improve educational opportunities. Gary Orfield, a professor at UCLA and co-director of the university’s Civil Rights Project, said although there’s been a steady increase in enrollment of non-White students in public schools, his research shows more students attend schools that are “intensely segregated” now than they did 30 years ago. That’s when the Supreme Court ruled in Board of Education of Oklahoma City v. Dowell that court-ordered desegregation plans were “not intended to operate in perpetuity,” allowing more segregation to take place over time as school districts reverted to neighborhood zoning. De facto segregation persists today, Orfield said, because many states have abandoned efforts to enforce integration.