Sixty-two years after Brown v. Board of Education found school segregation unconstitutional, a federal court has ordered a Mississippi school district to finally complete the process of integration, ruling that the town’s three previous attempts to resolve its racial divisions were insufficient.

In a 96-page ruling released last Friday, U.S. District Judge Debra Brown ordered the town of Cleveland, Mississippi, to integrate its two high schools, one of which is 100 percent black, and its two middle schools, one of which is 99.6 percent black. Cleveland’s racial divide is the legacy of a railroad running through the town, The Washington Post reports, splitting its roughly 12,000 residents into a largely white area to the west and a black area to the east. The lawsuit was just one of dozens of open de-segregation cases being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department in Mississippi alone, NBC News reports.

The school districts had argued that a move to de-segregate the schools would lead to “white flight,” with white families pulling their children from public schools and placing them in private or charter schools. Instead, the district proposed a system to encourage diversity through magnet programs.

In her ruling, Brown vehemently disagreed that this would work, pointing to five decades’ worth of stunted progress. “The delay in desegregation has deprived generations of students of the constitutionally-guaranteed right of an integrated education,” Brown wrote, referring to the first lawsuit filed against Cleveland to de-segregate its schools—more than 50 years ago.

“Although no court order can right these wrongs, it is the duty of the district to ensure that not one more student suffers under this burden,” she added.