Brown v. Board of Education: Caste, Culture, and the Constitution

Winner: Langum Prize

Before 1954, both law and custom mandated strict racial segregation throughout much of the nation. That began to change with Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark decision that overturned the pernicious “separate but equal” doctrine. In declaring that legally mandated school segregation was unconstitutional, the Supreme Court played a critical role in helping to dismantle America’s own version of apartheid, Jim Crow.

This new study of Brown—the title for a group of cases drawn from Kansas, Virginia, South Carolina, Delaware, and the District of Columbia—offers an insightful and original overview designed expressly for students and general readers. It is concise, up-to-date, highly readable, and very teachable.

The authors, all recognized authorities on legal history and civil rights law, do an admirable job of examining the fight for legal equality in its broad cultural and historical context. They convincingly show that Brown cannot be understood apart from the history of caste and exclusion in American society. That history antedated the very founding of the country and was supported by the nation’s highest institutions, including the Supreme Court whose decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) supported the notion of “separate but equal.”

Their book traces the lengthy court litigations, highlighting the pivotal role of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and including incisive portraits of key players, including co-plaintiff Oliver Brown, newly appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren, NAACP lawyer and future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, and Justice Felix Frankfurter, who recognized the crucial importance of a unanimous court decision and helped produce it. The authors simply but powerfully narrate the obstacles these individuals faced and the opportunities they grasped and clearly show that there was much more at stake than educational rights. Brown not only changed the national equation of race and caste—it also changed our view of the Court’s role in American life.

The dramatic story of the road to and from Brown, despite the retrenchments of recent years, needs to be heard anew. As we prepare to commemorate the decision’s fiftieth anniversary in May 2004, this book invites readers to walk that road again and appreciate the lasting importance of what is indisputably a landmark case.

1120338040
Brown v. Board of Education: Caste, Culture, and the Constitution

Winner: Langum Prize

Before 1954, both law and custom mandated strict racial segregation throughout much of the nation. That began to change with Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark decision that overturned the pernicious “separate but equal” doctrine. In declaring that legally mandated school segregation was unconstitutional, the Supreme Court played a critical role in helping to dismantle America’s own version of apartheid, Jim Crow.

This new study of Brown—the title for a group of cases drawn from Kansas, Virginia, South Carolina, Delaware, and the District of Columbia—offers an insightful and original overview designed expressly for students and general readers. It is concise, up-to-date, highly readable, and very teachable.

The authors, all recognized authorities on legal history and civil rights law, do an admirable job of examining the fight for legal equality in its broad cultural and historical context. They convincingly show that Brown cannot be understood apart from the history of caste and exclusion in American society. That history antedated the very founding of the country and was supported by the nation’s highest institutions, including the Supreme Court whose decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) supported the notion of “separate but equal.”

Their book traces the lengthy court litigations, highlighting the pivotal role of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and including incisive portraits of key players, including co-plaintiff Oliver Brown, newly appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren, NAACP lawyer and future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, and Justice Felix Frankfurter, who recognized the crucial importance of a unanimous court decision and helped produce it. The authors simply but powerfully narrate the obstacles these individuals faced and the opportunities they grasped and clearly show that there was much more at stake than educational rights. Brown not only changed the national equation of race and caste—it also changed our view of the Court’s role in American life.

The dramatic story of the road to and from Brown, despite the retrenchments of recent years, needs to be heard anew. As we prepare to commemorate the decision’s fiftieth anniversary in May 2004, this book invites readers to walk that road again and appreciate the lasting importance of what is indisputably a landmark case.

22.49 In Stock
Brown v. Board of Education: Caste, Culture, and the Constitution

Brown v. Board of Education: Caste, Culture, and the Constitution

Brown v. Board of Education: Caste, Culture, and the Constitution

Brown v. Board of Education: Caste, Culture, and the Constitution

eBook

$22.49  $29.99 Save 25% Current price is $22.49, Original price is $29.99. You Save 25%.

Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
WANT A NOOK?  Explore Now

Related collections and offers


Overview

Winner: Langum Prize

Before 1954, both law and custom mandated strict racial segregation throughout much of the nation. That began to change with Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark decision that overturned the pernicious “separate but equal” doctrine. In declaring that legally mandated school segregation was unconstitutional, the Supreme Court played a critical role in helping to dismantle America’s own version of apartheid, Jim Crow.

This new study of Brown—the title for a group of cases drawn from Kansas, Virginia, South Carolina, Delaware, and the District of Columbia—offers an insightful and original overview designed expressly for students and general readers. It is concise, up-to-date, highly readable, and very teachable.

The authors, all recognized authorities on legal history and civil rights law, do an admirable job of examining the fight for legal equality in its broad cultural and historical context. They convincingly show that Brown cannot be understood apart from the history of caste and exclusion in American society. That history antedated the very founding of the country and was supported by the nation’s highest institutions, including the Supreme Court whose decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) supported the notion of “separate but equal.”

Their book traces the lengthy court litigations, highlighting the pivotal role of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and including incisive portraits of key players, including co-plaintiff Oliver Brown, newly appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren, NAACP lawyer and future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, and Justice Felix Frankfurter, who recognized the crucial importance of a unanimous court decision and helped produce it. The authors simply but powerfully narrate the obstacles these individuals faced and the opportunities they grasped and clearly show that there was much more at stake than educational rights. Brown not only changed the national equation of race and caste—it also changed our view of the Court’s role in American life.

The dramatic story of the road to and from Brown, despite the retrenchments of recent years, needs to be heard anew. As we prepare to commemorate the decision’s fiftieth anniversary in May 2004, this book invites readers to walk that road again and appreciate the lasting importance of what is indisputably a landmark case.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780700634484
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Publication date: 01/05/2024
Series: Landmark Law Cases and American Society
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 304
File size: 1 MB

About the Author

Robert J. Cottrol is Harold Paul Green Research Professor of Law and professor of history and sociology at George Washington University. He is the author of The Afro-Yankees: Providence’s Black Community in the Antebellum Era.


Raymond T. Diamond is C. J. Morrow Research Professor of Law and adjunct professor of African diaspora studies at Tulane University.


Leland B. Ware is the Louis L. Redding Professor for the Study of Law and Public Policy at the University of Delaware.

Table of Contents

Editors’ Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. “A People Apart”

2. “Separate and Unequal”: An American Apartheid at the Dawn of an American Century

3. The NAACP in the Interwar Years: The Struggle Renewed

4. From Scientific Racism to Uneasy Egalitarianism: One Nation's Troubled Odyssey

5. Setting the Stage

6. Arguing the Case

7. Anatomy of a Decision

8. Brown II: “All Deliberate Speed”

9. From Target to Icon: Brown and the Role of Courts in American Life

Epilogue: Brown and Race: The Divided Legacy

Chronology

Bibliographical Essay

Bibliography

Index

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews