Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy

by James T. Patterson

Overview

2004 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Supreme Court's unanimous decision to end segregation in public schools. Many people were elated when Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in May 1954, the ruling that struck down state-sponsored racial segregation in America's public schools. Thurgood Marshall, chief attorney for the black families that launched the litigation, exclaimed later, "I was so happy, I was numb." The novelist Ralph Ellison wrote, "another battle of the Civil War has been won. The rest is up to us and I'm very glad. What a wonderful world of possibilities are unfolded for the children!"

Here, in a concise, moving narrative, Bancroft Prize-winning historian James T. Patterson takes readers through the dramatic case and its fifty-year aftermath. A wide range of characters animates the story, from the little-known African Americans who dared to challenge Jim Crow with lawsuits (at great personal cost); to Thurgood Marshall, who later became a Justice himself; to Earl Warren, who shepherded a fractured Court to a unanimous decision. Others include segregationist politicians like Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas; Presidents Eisenhower, Johnson, and Nixon; and controversial Supreme Court justices such as William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas.

Most Americans still see Brown as a triumph—but was it? Patterson shrewdly explores the provocative questions that still swirl around the case. Could the Court—or President Eisenhower—have done more to ensure compliance with Brown? Did the decision touch off the modern civil rights movement? How useful are court-ordered busing and affirmative action against racial segregation? To what extent has racial mixing affected the academic achievement of black children? Where indeed do we go from here to realize the expectations of Marshall, Ellison, and others in 1954?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195156324
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/12/2002
Series:	Pivotal Moments in American History
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	808,830
Product dimensions:	6.28(w) x 9.34(h) x 0.88(d)

About the Author

James T. Patterson won the Bancroft Prize in History for Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974. He is the author of numerous books concerning modern American life, he is Ford Foundation Professor of History at Brown University.

Table of Contents

	Editors' Note	xi
	Preface: Contesting the Color Line	xiii
1	Race and the Schools Before Brown	1
2	The Grass Roots and Struggling Lawyers	21
3	The Court Decides	46
4	Crossroads, 1954-55	70
5	Southern Whites Fight Back	86
6	Striving for Racial Balance in the 1960s	118
7	The Burger Court Surprises	147
8	Stalemates	170
9	Resegregation?	191
10	Legacies and Lessons	206
Appendix I	Key Cases	225
Appendix II	Tables and Figures	227
	Notes	237
	Bibliographical Essay	263
	Acknowledgments	269
	Index	271

Editorial Reviews

"Patterson's new book is a compelling examination of the history behind the decision and the realities of enforcing it."—Robin Dougherty, The Boston Globe

"Absorbing book. With admirable balance, Patterson synthesizes much of the debate. His streamlined rendition reminds us that justices have always considered the social, political, and legal consequences of their decisions."—Laura Kalman, The New York Times Book Review

"Penetrating history-cum-analysis."—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World

"This volume by a widely recognized historian of twentieth-century America presents a highly readable and well-organized overview of events leading up to the 1954 Brown decision, the decision itself, and its aftermath...Patterson does a nice job of sketching the broad outlines and placing developments in a larger context"—The Journal of Southern History

From the Publisher

With admirable balance, Patterson synthesizes much of the debate in Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy. In this season of overwrought doubts about the court's legitimacy, his streamlined rendition reminds us that justices have always considered the social, political and legal consequences of their decisions.
— New York Times Book Review

Laura Kalman

Patterson (history, Brown Univ., Grand Expectations) is eminently qualified to lead us through the saga of the Civil Rights movement as it relates to public education. The U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1954 decision overturned a way of thinking that had persisted largely unchallenged since the end of the Civil War. A commonly accepted legal theory supported by an 1896 Supreme Court decision (Plessy v. Ferguson) was based, the author notes, upon archaic psychological theories that had been superseded by modern theory supporting a linkage between racial segregation and concomitant feelings of inferiority and damage to motivation and, hence, to learning. The author devotes the rest of the book to the tedious and thorny issues of implementation that he believes were needlessly protracted because the Court, in an effort to achieve unanimity and, feeling the need to placate the Southern states by abstaining from inflammatory rhetoric or threat of force, laid down only broad guidelines. The result, notes the author, is a process that has lately actually fluctuated back in the direction of permitting re-segregation in neighborhood schools where demographic changes resulting from private choice rather than public policy have produced a different racial mix. The issues are complex, profound, and ongoing, but the author provides balanced and extensive coverage. Recommended for academic and law libraries.--Philip Y. Blue, New York State Supreme Court Criminal Branch Law Lib., New York Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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