Professor Michelle Adams’s book about a landmark Detroit school desegregation case continues to draw honors and praise.
Most recently, her book, The Containment: Detroit, The Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North (Macmillan, 2025), was named among the Michigan Notable Books for 2026. The Library of Michigan honors 20 books each year that are written by a Michigan author or have a Michigan theme.
“This year’s Michigan Notable Books selections exhibit the magnetism of Michigan and open doorways to the voices and experiences across generations of people,” said Mindy Babarskis, reference librarian for the Library of Michigan and coordinator of the Michigan Notable Books program.
Adams’s book details the history and impact of Milliken v. Bradley, the landmark Detroit school desegregation case that effectively ended the era of Brown v. Board of Education. Beyond the case’s specifics, the book also offers a broader look at how Jim Crow laws were implemented and maintained in the northern United States. When the book was published, Adams explained details of the book and her motivations for writing it for a Law School news story.
The Michigan Notable Books announcement reads in part, “Through vivid portraits of activists, judges, and political leaders, Adams shows how efforts to create a ‘metropolitan remedy’ (to Detroit school segregation) collided with a conservative judiciary and the forces of white flight, riots, and urban upheaval. The book reveals how this ruling cemented enduring educational inequality and shaped today’s resistance to affirmative action and broader civil rights reforms.”
In addition to the Michigan Notable Books honor, other recent honors for The Containment include:
- The New York Times included the book on its 100 Notable Books of 2025 list.
- The New Yorker magazine listed the book as an Also Recommended entry on its Best Books of 2025.
- The Christian Science Monitor named it among its top 25 books of 2025.
- In January 2026, the Washington Post included it on a list of 13 new paperbacks to read this month.
Also, in the fall, the Historical Society for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan presented Adams with its Avern Cohn Award for excellence in the collection, preservation, and interpretation of Michigan legal history. Named for Michigan Law alum and longtime District Court Judge Avern Cohn, ’49, the award honors his dedication to legal scholarship.
“I’m delighted that The Containment has been recognized in so many contexts,” Adams said. “I’m particularly proud of the dual recognition here in the state of Michigan. It was my distinct honor last year to speak to so many Michiganders—and others—about The Containment and the important issues it brings to life.”
Earlier in 2025, The Containment won the Stone Book Award from from the Museum of African American History Boston | Nantucket.
Adams, the Henry M. Butzel Professor of Law, is an expert on race discrimination and related subjects. She has taught courses on constitutional law; the First Amendment; and race, law, and history. She also won the 2024 L. Hart Wright Teaching Award—the oldest of the annual student-nominated awards presented by the Law School Student Senate.