Jim Crow's Children: The Broken Promise of the Brown DecisionPeter Irons, acclaimed historian and author of A People History of the Supreme Court, explores of one of the supreme court's most important decisions and its disappointing aftermath In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court sounded the death knell for school segregation with its decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. So goes the conventional wisdom. Weaving together vivid portraits of lawyers and such judges as Thurgood Marshall and Earl Warren, sketches of numerous black children throughout history whose parents joined lawsuits against Jim Crow schools, and gripping courtroom drama scenes, Irons shows how the erosion of the Brown decision—especially by the Court’s rulings over the past three decades—has led to the “resegregation” of public education in America. |
Contents
Cut Yer Thumb er Finger Off I | 1 |
Forcibly Ejected from Said Coach | 24 |
We Got a Good Bunch of Nigras Here | 43 |
Give Me the Colored Doll | 62 |
We Are Tired of Tar Paper Shacks | 80 |
I Thanked God Right Then and There | 95 |
Study Hard and Accept the Status Quo | 118 |
We Only Took a Little Liberty | 133 |
Too Much Deliberation and Not Enough Speed | 188 |
Do Two Wrongs Make a Right? | 210 |
Two CitiesOne White the Other Black | 234 |
Too Swift and Too Soon | 259 |
CHAPTER IS Doing the White Mans Thing | 289 |
The Courts Ruling Remains Unfulfilled | 315 |
CONCLUSION The Goal Is Quality Education | 338 |
Suggested Readings and Chapter Sources | 349 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
American appeal areas asked attended school black and white black children black parents black schools black students Boston Briggs Brown decision busing Carter Chief Justice City city's schools civil rights Clarendon County Clark colored Constitution County school county's Deep South DeKalb County Delaware desegregation Detroit federal court federal judges filed Fourteenth Amendment grade high school issue Jack Greenberg Jim Crow schools Jim Crow system judicial Kansas Kenneth Clark kids law school lawsuit Little Rock Milliken Moton NAACP lawyers Negro neighborhood Oklahoma opinion percent plaintiffs Plessy President Prince Edward County public schools race racial segregation Robert Robert Carter ruling school board school districts school integration school officials school segregation Scott's Branch segregated schools separate but equal slaves South Carolina southern Spottswood Robinson state's suburbs Summerton Supreme Court Swann teachers Thurgood Marshall tion Topeka Virginia vote Warren white children white flight white schools white students wrote