Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (Pivotal Moments in American History) [Hardcover]

James T. Patterson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0195127161 | ISBN-13: 978-0195127164

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, compelling 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?

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In one of the most explosive legal decisions of the century, Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that racial segregation in America's public schools was unconstitutional. The chief attorney for the African American families who initiated the legal challenge was Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first black person to serve as a Supreme Court Justice. In this brief, detailed book, historian James Patterson reconstructs the complex history of the watershed 1954 case, from its legal precursors to its troubling legacy. "To be sure, Brown called for changes that the Court itself could not enforce," he writes. "In time, however, some of those changes came to pass, even in schools, those most highly sensitive of institutions."

Patterson outlines the stories of several influential pre-Brown cases and details the thinking and exploits of the legal minds involved with Brown, including Marshall and Chief Justice Earl Warren. He also follows the various responses to the decision by those most affected by it, including bigoted Arkansas governor Orval Faubus as well as President Dwight Eisenhower. More than a simple chronology, Brown v. Board of Education raises many questions about America's unfinished business of truly democratizing its educational system once and for all. Both instructive and disturbing, this book calls for us to question whether we will turn back the clock or demand movement forward. --Eugene Holley Jr.

From Library Journal

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.DPhilip Y. Blue, New York State Supreme Court Criminal Branch Law Lib., New York
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (March 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195127161
• ISBN-13: 978-0195127164
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,021,848 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Well Researched Book, September 3, 2001

By 

C. W. Emblom "Bill Emblom" (Ishpeming, Michigan USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (Pivotal Moments in American History) (Hardcover)

Having grown up during the 1950's I wanted to familiarize myself in regard to civil rights, in particular as it applied to the historic 1954 Supreme Court ruling "Brown vs. the Board of Education." I found that President Eisenhower was not in favor of getting involved in civil rights for African Americans. He is quoted as saying that appointing Earl Warren as Chief Justice to the Supreme Court was the "biggest damn fool mistake I ever made." Roy Wilkins of the NAACP is quoted as saying if Eisenhower fought World War II as he did for civil rights, "We'd all be speaking German today." I was disappointed in Eisenhower's approach to civil rights for African Americans. Ten years after the 1954 Brown ruling, things hadn't changed regarding civil rights. The heroes in the book are those workers who fought in the trenches for civil rights, particularly during the 1960's. Most of them are not remembered, but their contributions remain, nonetheless. President Johnson's greatest legacy remains getting the government behind racial justice. The 1954 Brown ruling hasn't had the effect it may have desired regarding schools, but by the 20th anniversary of Brown, America had been brought kicking and screaming forward for civil rights for African Americans. The book lists a number of cases and studies with their results and I have concluded we don't really know whether integration has improved test scores in schools. Having been a teacher myself for 32 years I do know that children are not bigoted as were some children and adults I knew as a kid. Kids often reflect their parents behavior. This is a book that is definitely worthy of your time. I did find one error in the book. The author said Julius and Ethyl Rosenberg were executed in July of 1953 when actually it was on June 19, 1953.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More Is Needed, September 25, 2001

By 

Bakari Chavanu - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (Pivotal Moments in American History) (Hardcover)

Much more needs to be written about the Brown v. Board of Education era. Patterson indeed does a good service of describing the "trouble legacy" of Brown. For while school integregation and the end to seperate but equal laws were a major revolution of sorts in this country, Brown left unresolved significant questions and problems concerning the education of African descended students and other minorities. For example, while Brown focused on legal and structural changes in public education, which led to the desegregation of schools, it did not address issues of integrating school curriculum and preparing teachers and school officials for a multicultural transformation of schooling. It simply assumed that the solution to racism in this society was to provide a way for Blacks to assimilate in the larger White society instead of empowering themselves to respect and build their own culture and institutions. While Patterson deals with the legal aspects Brown, he too avoids or overlooks the pedagogical and cultural issues that went unaddressed in Brown. Thus, Patterson's work doesn't add significantly anything new to the history of Brown that is not dealt with in J. Harvie Wilkson's From Brown to Bakke or Kluger's Simple Justice.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars America's Second Revolution, November 10, 2002

By 

Alan Mills (Chicago, Illinois USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (Pivotal Moments in American History) (Hardcover)

Patterson succeeds in writing a very different book than Kruger's unequaled "Simple Justice." While Simple Justice told the story of how Brown v. Board of Education came to be, Paterson asks whether Brown should have been.

After giving a brief history of Brown (covering, in summary fashion, much of the ground covered by Kruger), Patterson examines the aftermath of Brown. The question Patterson addresses throughout the book is whether Brown marked a step forward in civil rights.

Patterson successfully debunks the argument that Brown was a step backwards. As he says, anyone who thinks that the country was better off before Brown had better buy a two way ticket if he wants to go back in time, because he will want to turn right around and come back. Before Brown, most black children were educated in tarpaper shacks, by grossly underpaid teachers, with no supplies, and even less respect.

Did Brown solve all problems? Of course not. As Patterson notes, what Brown does do is prove that there are limits to the power of the courts to accomplish social change. However, the Supreme Court did set an unequivocal moral tone, which set the stage for the civil rights movement, which (building on the constitutional foundation built by Brown) changed the world we all live in.

Has racism ended? No. But no one should expect any Supreme Court decision (or even a series of decisions spanning less than 25 years) to undo the racial history of this country which had taken 400 years to build. The real shame is that beginning in the late 70's, the courts, Congress, and the President have all worked to reverse the moral tone set in Brown. Unfortunately, they have succeeded all too well. But one can not fairly blame that on the Supreme Court's decision in Brown.

A thought provoking book which should be read by anyone who is interested in the history of race relations in the second half of the 20th Century.