In the summer of 1970, the members of the New Orleans Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals understood clearly the realities of race in the South. Houston, Texas, like other Southern cities, had made haste toward racial school desegregation as slowly as the White Southern Federal courts would allow. When the High School of Performing and Visual Arts opened its doors in Houston a year later, a new superintendent and liberal-dominated Board of Education wished to demonstrate the positive potential of a voluntarily desegregated student body. HSPVA was the first United States public school for the arts specifically used for racial desegregation purposes, the prototype for the first public urban magnet program of desegregation used to replace a standing court order, and a continuing prototype for other public magnet schools for the arts across the United States. Talent Knows No Color is a 35-year history of HSPVA, exemplary in both arts and academics, which chronicles multi-perspective...