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Five or so years ago, I sat down to write a proposal to fund the writing of a history of school desegregation. This was not easy to write, since I had to account for the legal history of the process since the Brown decision, as well as the actual amount and kind of school desegregation that had taken place in that period, and come up with a definitive, overarching theme by which these two accounts would be tied together. Though the proposal was finished and submitted for funding, I was dissatisfied with my ability to say anything thematically novel or convincing about what had transpired in the forty-five or so years since the decision had been rendered. The funding agency evidently agreed with my own view of the proposal as it was not approved. So, I put my interest in school desegregation on the back burner, where it has rested until now. Once again, I get to confront the issue of whether or not I have anything interesting to say about Brown and its aftermath.
1 Kluger, Richard Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education, the Epochal Supreme Court Decision that Outlawed Segregation, and of Black America's Century-Long Struggle for Equality, Under Law (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976).Google Scholar
2 Orfield, Gary Eaton, Susan E. and the Harvard Project on School Desegregation, Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education (New York: New Press, 1996).Google Scholar
3 Armor, David Forced Justice: School Desegregation and the Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).Google Scholar
4 Wolters, Raymond The Burden of Brown: Thirty Years of School Desegregation (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992).Google Scholar
5 Patterson, James T. Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).Google Scholar
6 Even this argument, however, is contestable. See Klarman, Michael J. “How Brown Changed Race Relations: The Backlash Thesis,” Journal of American History 81 (June, 1994): 81–118. Klarman argues that Brown is overrated as a causal element in establishing the civil rights movement, much of which was in motion before the decision in the case was rendered. Further, for Klarman, Brown's major accomplishment in race relations was not sparking civil rights activities but creating a backlash and a massive resistance movement in the South.Google Scholar
7 Subsequently, Kluger has moved away from education as a focus in his published work. His major works after Simple Justice include two novels published in 1982 and non-ficiton works on the New York Herald Tribune, published in 1986, and on the Philip Morris tobacco conglomerate, published in 1996.Google Scholar
8 Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education, 210.Google Scholar
9 Tushnet, Mark V. Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1936–1961 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 5. The reviewer in the History of Education Quarterly called Kluger's work a “masterful book” that “reminds us why a constant striving for racial and human justice is so critically important.” Finkelman, Paul “Racial Justice and the Public Schools,” History of Education Quarterly 19, (Fall, 1970): 373–80; quotations 373,380.Google Scholar
10 Board of Education of Oklahoma City v. Dowell, 489 U.S. 237 (1991) and Freeman v Pitts, 503 U.S. 467 (1992).Google Scholar
11 Kluger, Simple Justice, x.Google Scholar
12 Ibid., 778.Google Scholar
13 Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 424 (1976)Google Scholar
14 Ibid., 774.Google Scholar
15 As quoted in Kluger, Simple Justice, 606.Google Scholar
16 See Kluger, Simple Justice, 605 and Tushnet, Making Civil Rights Law, 351.Google Scholar
17 Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education, 211.Google Scholar
18 Schwartz, Bernard Decision: How the Supreme Court Decides Cases (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 237–55.Google Scholar
19 Ibid., 238, 241. Schwartz also agrees with Kluger and Tushnet that Rehnquist's memorandum on Brown reflected his own, and not Justice Jackson's, views.Google Scholar
20 Kelly, Alfred H. “An Inside View of Brown v. Board of Education, paper to the American Historical Association, December 28, 1961, entered into the Congressional Record.Google Scholar
21 Urban, Wayne J. Black Scholar: Horace Mann Bond, 1904–1972 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992), 168–79.Google Scholar