National Affairs: TRAIL BLAZERS ON THE BENCH

The South's U.S. Judges Lead a Civil Rights Offensive

THE 100 whites who marched behind a coffin into the Louisiana State Capitol at Baton Rouge last week were dressed for a funeral—the women in black veils, their sons in neat dark suits. The adults were New Orleans parents; the children, pupils assigned to the city's newly integrated public schools. And in their coffin was the blackened, singed effigy of a man they have little reason to love: J. (for James) Skelly Wright, the tough-minded U.S. District judge who had ordered New Orleans schools to...