Product Description
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…. More >>
Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy
Before delving into this book, I suggest that readers pick up and thoroughly digest Richard Kluger’s Simple Justice, an epochal book on this topic. Kluger’s book is absolutely brillant and extremely detailed with insights on Chief Justice Vinson and Chief Justice Warren’s wrangling the Court for a unamimous decision, among many other subjects, including many of the cases that led up to Brown v. Board.
Rating: 3 / 5
This is by far one of the best books I have read on such a reat case in our nations history. The story alone of Brown vs. The Board of Education is a very intersting read, but Patterson backs the story with other facts and stories that go along with the case. For anyone who need to know anyhting about this case, be it for law school r high school, or just for fun, I highly recomend this great book.
Rating: 5 / 5
Book arrived in great condition and arrived quickly. I recommend this book to anyone interested in race or the Brown v. Board of Education Case.
Rating: 5 / 5
James Patterson adds an excellent addition to the Pivotal moments in American history series with Brown v. Board of Education. This book explores the results of Brown and how it shaped civil rights in the post Brown era. While of course focusing primarily on schools, Patterson also takes a look at how Brown emboldened groups like the NAACP, caused the rise of the more militant civil rights group by the failure to implement Brown and shows how Brown changed the views of those who went through it. The book does not just end with Brown II but goes on to look at the busing cases and the efforts of several legislatures to implement plans to uphold school desegregation. It examines the tactics of extremist white southerners to keep schools segregated and posits some interesting ideas about how Brown changed urbanization and may (at least in the south) have encouraged a second wave of white migration to the suburbs. Overall though it is a thorough analysis of the post actions that the Brown decision derived.
My one complaint about this book and the reason for the four stars is that it says very little about the actual arguments of the case. While providing a background of the key players in the case there is little information about the oral and written arguments presented to the Supreme Court. That being said given that the series tries to give the most amount of information in the shortest number of pages possible I would bump it to 4.5 stars.
Rating: 4 / 5
James T. Patterson’s Brown v. Board of Education is an exceedingly well researched historical work on the pivotal cases faced on all judicial levels in the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s regarding segregation in our nation’s schools. Professor Patterson masterfully writes on not just the legal implications of the landmark decision(s) in Brown but also in regard to their social impact. He puts into a greater racial and societal context not only the meaning of Brown but also the strategies of Thurgood Marshall and his associates in deciding to bring before the Court when many other challenges to Jim Crow could have been argued with much legal and moral merit.
Patterson tirelessly, but interestingly, cites case after case and puts each before the reader in the context of a broader societal consequence. He dispassionately argues the merit and challenges of desegregation as society was changing at a precipitous rate with “white flight” from our urban centers to affluence and the ability to “avoid” integration with the availability of private schools obviously not covered by Brown or the 14th Amendment. A theme seemingly in most, if not all, of Patterson’s writings on the American 20th Century is the effect of expectations of the populous. Indeed his wonderful contribution to the Oxford Series of United States History is entitled “Grand Expectations”. It is interesting how he weaves that theme into this much more specific narrative. “This is another way of reiterating an essential truth about Brown: so many larger postwar forces- rising expectations and restlessness among blacks; slowly changing white attitudes about racial segregation; the Cold War, which left Jim Crow America vulnerable to the charge of hypocrisy when it claimed to lead the Free World – were impelling the nation townard liberalization of its racial practices.
This is a great book and is part of the Oxford Series of Pivotal Moments in American History. To state the utter obvious, the reader should be aware that this “moment” is still very much ongoing and, as such, this book is much broader, out of intellectual necessity, than one, or really two, Supreme Court decisions.
Rating: 5 / 5