Derrick Bell won hundreds of school desegregation cases as a civil rights lawyer.

And he recognized a pattern in U.S. civil rights history.

Brown v. Board promised integration. Twenty years later, schools remained segregated.

Voting rights advanced, then retreated.

Affirmative action opened doors, then faced endless legal assault.

1980. Bell published "Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma."

Black liberation advanced when it served dominant interests. When those needs changed, progress stopped.

The Brown decision happened during the Cold War. Segregation was a liability. The U.S. needed democratic credibility.

Bell called this interest convergence.

Progress isn’t moral. It’s transactional.

The framework explained Reconstruction's collapse, integration's failure, affirmative action under constant attack.

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