In 1987, when veteran school administrator Thomas E. Truitt took the post of district superintendent in Florence, South Carolina, he assumed leadership of a public school system in denial of its racial disharmony. More than three decades after Brown v. Board of Education, Florence District One had never implemented an integration plan that met federal approval; rather the district had skirted the intent of the federal mandate by employing "freedom of choice" and traditional attendance zones. In the 1990s a single issue--the need to replace an aging, predominantly black elementary...