Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T14:02:04.240Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Signals and Spillover: Brown v. Board of Education and Other Social Movements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2007

David S. Meyer  and
Steven A. Boutcher
David S. Meyer
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine, e-mail [email protected]
Steven A. Boutcher
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine, e-mail [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The watershed Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education affected activist politics on issues that extend well beyond African-American civil rights or education. The apparent success of the Court decision in spurring social change encouraged activists in other social movements to emulate the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's litigation strategy, and to adapt organizational structures, political strategies, and rhetoric borrowed from the civil rights movement. We examine how a Supreme Court decision and its subsequent interpretation influenced the development of other social movements. Borrowing from work on social movements, we contend that the Court decision signaled judicial openness to stand up for minority points of view on questions of fundamental rights, and that the civil rights movement spilled over to affect other movements. Activists continued to respond to that signal decades after Brown, even when that signal of judicial responsiveness and openness did not reflect the real prospects for achieving influence through a litigation-based strategy.David S. Meyer is Professor of Sociology and Political Science ([email protected]) and Steven A. Boutcher is Doctoral Candidate ([email protected]) in Sociology, University of California, Irvine. We are grateful for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper from Lisa Garcia Bedolla, Catherine Corrigall-Brown, Stephanie DiAlto, Sharon Lean, Sharon Oselin, and Su Yang.

Type
Research Article
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , March 2007 , pp. 81 - 93
Copyright
© 2007 American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, James, Dara N. Byrne, and Tavis Smiley. 2004. The Unfinished Agenda of Brown v. Board of Education. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.
Associated Press. 2004. “Mass. Debate on Gay Marriage Continues.” February 12.
Baker, Mary, Cynthia Grant Bowman, and Morrison Torrey. 1994. Feminist Jurisprudence: Taking Women Seriously. St. Paul, Minnesota: West Publishing.
Bell, Derrick A. 2004. Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform. New York: Oxford University Press.
Berry, Jeffrey M. 1999. The New Liberalism. Washington, DC: Brookings.
Breines, Wini. 1989. Community and Organization in the New Left, 1962–68. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers.
Brooks, David. 2005. “Roe's Birth, and Death.” New York Times. April 21.
Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
Carillo, Cristobal. 2004. “ Mendez vs. Westminster: The story of how segregation was ended in Orange County, as told by Sylvia Mendez, the daughter of Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez.” La Voz Mestiza Winter (2): 1.Google Scholar
Cashin, Sheryll. 2004. The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class Are Undermining the American Dream. New York: Public Affairs.
Costain, Ann N. 1992. Inviting Women's Rebellion. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Craig, Barbara Hinkson, and David M. O'Brien. 1993. Abortion and American Politics. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House.
Dudziak, Mary L. 2000. Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Epp, Charles R. 1998. The Rights Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Epstein, Lee, Jeffrey A. Segal, Harold J. Spaeth, and Thomas G. Walker. 2003. The Supreme Court Compendium: Data, Decisions and Developments. 3rd ed. Washington, DC: CQ Press.
Evans, Sarah. 1980. Personal Politics. New York: Vintage.
Fendrich, James, and Kenneth L. Lovoy 1988. Back to the future: Adult political behavior of former student activists. American Sociological Review 53 (5): 780–84.Google Scholar
Foreman, Christopher H. Jr. 2004. Introduction—The Brown decision at age 50: Limitations and emanations. PS 37 (April) 2: 203–04. With contributions by Gerald Rosenberg, Neal Devins, Paul Sracic, Marion Orr and Hanes Walton, Jr., and Jennifer L. Hochschild (205–229).Google Scholar
Freeman, Jo. 1983. Introduction. In Social Movements of the Sixties and Seventies, ed. Jo Freeman. New York: Longman.
Gale Research Company. 1961–2000 (var. editions). Encyclopedia of Associations. Vol. 1. National Organizations. Detroit: Gale.
Garrow, David J. 1978. Protest at Selma: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.
Glendon, Mary Ann. 1991. Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse. NY: Free Press.
Goodridge v. Department of Pub. Health, Massachusetts SJC (2003–08860).
Gratz v. Bollinger. 539 US 244 (2003).
Greenberg, Jack. 1994. Crusaders in the Courts: How a Dedicated Band of Lawyers Fought for the Civil Rights Revolution. New York: Basic.
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965).
Grutter v. Bollinger. 539 US 306 (2003).
Handler, Joel F. 1978. Social Movements and the Legal System. New York: Academic Press.
Hull, N.E.H., and Peter Charles Hoffer. 2001. Roe v. Wade: The Abortion Rights Controversy in American History. Lawrence: University of Kansas.
Kelo v. City of New London, Connecticut, 125 US 2655 (2005).
Klarman, Michael J. 2004. From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kluger, Richard. 1975. Simple Justice. New York: Vintage.
Layton, Azza Salaama. 2000. International Politics and Civil Rights Policies in the United States, 1941–1960. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Lopez, Ian F. Haney. 1996. White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race. New York: New York University Press.
Marsh, Charles. 1999. God's Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Maxwell, Carol. 2002. Pro-Life Activists in America: Meaning, Motivation, and Direct Action. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
McAdam, Doug. 1982. Political Process and the Origins of Black Insurgency. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
McAdam, Doug. 1988. Freedom Summer. New York: Oxford University Press.
McAdam, Doug, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly. 2002. Dynamics of Contention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McCann, Michael. 1992. Reform litigation on trial. Law and Social Inquiry 17: 715–43.Google Scholar
McCann, Michael. 1994. Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
McCarthy, John D., and Mayer N. Zald 1977. Resource mobilization and social movements: A partial theory. American Sociological Review 82: 1212–41.Google Scholar
Mendez v. Westminster (1946) 64 F. Supp. 544.
Merry, Sally Engle. 1990. Getting Justice and Getting Even: Legal Consciousness among Working Class Americans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Meyer, David S. 1993. Protest cycles and political process. Political Research Quarterly 46: 451–79.Google Scholar
Meyer, David S. 2004. Protest and political opportunity. Annual Review of Sociology 30: 125–45.Google Scholar
Meyer, David S., and Debra Minkoff. 2004. Conceptualizing political opportunity. Social Forces 82 (4): 1457–92.Google Scholar
Meyer, David S., and Suzanne Staggenborg 1996. Movements, countermovements, and the structure of political opportunity. American Journal of Sociology 101: 1628–60.Google Scholar
Meyer, David S., and Sidney Tarrow, eds. 1998. The Social Movement Society. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.
Meyer, David S., and Nancy Whittier. 1994. Social movement spillover. Social Problems 41: 277–98.Google Scholar
Miller, James. 1987. Democracy is in the Streets. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Morris, Aldon D. 1984. The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement. New York: Free Press.
Neier, Aryeh. 1982. Only Judgment: The Limits of Litigation in Social Change. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
O'Connor, Karen. 1980. Women's Organizations' Use of the Courts. Lexington, Massachusetts: Lexington Books.
Ogletree, Charles J. 2004. All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education. New York: Norton.
Plessy v. Ferguson. 163 US 537 (1896).
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).
Rosenberg, Gerald N. 1991. The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change? Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rosenberg, Gerald N. 2004. Substituting symbol for substance: What did Brown really accomplish? PS 37 (2): 205–09.Google Scholar
Scheingold, Stuart. 1974. The Politics of Rights: Lawyers, Public Policy, and Political Change. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Skocpol, Theda. 2003. Diminished Democracy: From Membership To Management In American Civic Life. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Snow, David A., and Robert D. Benford. 1992. Master frames and cycles of protest. In Frontiers of Social Movement Theory, ed. Aldon D. Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Staggenborg, Suzanne 1991. The Pro-Choice Movement. New York: Oxford University.
Staggenborg, Suzanne 1993. Critical events and the mobilization of the pro-choice movement. Research in Political Sociology 6: 319–45.Google Scholar
Tarrow, Sidney 1996. States and opportunities: The political structuring of social movements. In Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements, eds. Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tarrow, Sidney 1998. Power in Movement. 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge.
Tushnet, Mark V. 1987. The NAACP's Legal Strategy against Segregated Education, 1925–1950. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Whalen, Jack, and Richard Flacks. 1987. Beyond the Barricades. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Whittier, Nancy. 1995. Feminist Generations: The Persistence of the Radical Women's Movement. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Wilson, James Q. 1995. Political Organizations. 2nd ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Wittes, Benjamin. 2005. Letting go of Roe. Atlantic Monthly, January/February, 48–53.