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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?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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

A great start to understanding the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education
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.

Fast Shipping and great book!!
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.

A terrific and thorough review of Brown et al.
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.

Desegregation and Brown v. Board - worth the read
This is really a must read book for anyone interested in the issues surround desegregation and the efforts by Thurgood Marshall and others to end such practices in America's schools.It also is a very vivid reminder that courts and lawsuits can only go so far, and in the end it is people and their institutions that must be changed as well.Did Brown achieve all that it was hoped that it would - the author argues that it didn't, but that it did lay the foundation for tremendous change in racial relations during the last century. The author also helps to place the decision of Brown in context with other legal and political events that help the reader understand what was the source of resistence in various parts of the US to school desegregation and subsequent busing endeavors.Well worth reading and keeping on your shelves.

America's Second Revolution
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. ... Read more

Product Description
The NAACP's fight against segregated education--the first public interest litigation campaign--culminated in the 1954 Brown decision. While touching on the general social, political, and economic climate in which the NAACP acted, Mark V. Tushnet emphasizes the internal workings of the organization as revealed in its own documents. He argues that the dedication and political and legal skills of staff members such as Walter White, Charles Hamilton Houston, and Thurgood Marshall were responsible for the ultimate success of public interest law. This edition contains a new epilogue by the author that addresses general questions of litigation strategy, the contested question of whether the Brown decision mattered, and the legacy of Brown through the Burger and Rehnquist courts. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Thorough-good
Probably the most important US Supreme Court decision of the 20th Century was the 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education, which famously overturned the "separate but equal" doctrine and declared segregation in public education to violate the Equal Protection Clause (of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment).Important as Brown itself was, however, in truth the Brown decision represented the culmination of a remarkable litigation campaign waged over decades by Thurgood Marshall, Charles Hamilton Houston, and the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund. Professor Tushnet's classic study of this campaign collects and imparts a detailed history of this campaign in the years leading up to, and eventually bringing about, Brown.As much as Tushnet carefully examines the key problems Jim Crow legal doctrine posed for the lawyers, it is Tushnet's exploration into how the NAACP overcame the difficult organizational, financial, political, and human resources challenges of the endeavor that makes this truly the story of a great campaign, one chock full of timeless lessons for social justice lawyers and activists of every stripe.
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The idea that taxpayers should pay reparations to African Americans for the damages of slavery and segregation is quickly becoming a central demand of some civil rights leaders. It has the backing of important black politicians like Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich), distinguished black intellectuals like Henry Louis Gates and activists like Randall Robinson, who led the successful boycott movement against South Africa a decade ago. The Chicago City Council has overwhelmingly endorsed the concept and municipalities and state governments around the country are considering giving it support.

In this well researched and carefully argued book, David Horowitz traces the origins of the reparations movement. He examines the case made by its advocates and concludes that it is "morally questionable and racially incendiary."He notes that only a tiny minority of Americans ever owned slaves; and most Americans living today (white and otherwise) are descended from post-Civil War immigrants who have no lineal connection to slavery at all.More intriguingly, he also points out that the GNP of black America is so large that it makes the African American community the tenth most prosperous "nation" in the world.But this book is more than just an in depth casebook on the hot button issue of reparations. In the hope of initiating a dialogue, Horowitz originally presented a summary of his ideas on this subject in the form of an advertisement that appeared in several college newspapers and was rejected by many more. Editorialists in America's leading papers and several chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union weighed on Horowitz's side. With the assistance of Richard Poe, Horowitz uses the response to the reparations issue to show how the new racial orthodoxy collides with the free speech battle and what its implications are for American education and culture. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (88)

Junk text written by a money-hungry kook
This is a horrible book, filled with inaccuracies and right-wing rhetoric.Any well-read, socially-conscious individual can shoot more holes in this book than a sieve.

self-promoting book misses the mark
Much of the book is about Horowitz's tour, and his ongoing war with "tenured radicals" -- left wing academics. But most leftists are not academics, relatively few academics are leftists and the expansion of part-timers in academy means many are not tenured. The book tends to engage in distortions of the views of some of the people who he attacks. The book is a bit repetitive as the argument doesn't seem to get beyond the 10 arguments that were published in Horowitz's advertisement used for his tour.

Horowitz never rally addresses the data that shows vast differences between white and black in things like wealth, homeownership, unemployment rate, income levels, or likelihood of prosecution and imprisonment for the same crime.

Horowitz points out that much of the south's economy was destroyed in the civil war, a fourth of the white male population of military age were killed, so, he says, the south paid the price for slavery. but the slaves were not directly compensated. it is a well-accepted legal principle that if some people make profits from a criminal enterprise, their profits should be confiscated to re-imburse the victims. Slavery was a criminal enterprise, so it should have followed that the land and other property derived by the planter class and southern corporations from profits from slavery should have been transferred to the freed slaves at the end of the civil war. This didn't happen. The freed slaves were able to be forced into virtual bondage again due to being destitute after the civil war. The 850,000 acres of abandoned or confiscated land held by the Freedmen's Bureau was supposed to be transferred to the freed slaves, but the administration of Andrew Johnson sold it off to capitalist investors. This was why the Radical Republicans in Congress tried to impeach Johnson. Lack of inherited assets such as land affected the fortunes of subsequent generations of slave descendants. This obligation to do what is right doesn't end just because of that failure at the end of the civil war. The current value of that land and capital would be in the hundreds of billons today.

Horowitz argues that the various welfare and affirmative action programs of the Great Society era transferred "trillions" to African-Americans but provides no supporting data for this. In reality the great majority of beneficiaries of all welfare programs have been, and continue to be, poor white folks.

Horowtiz tries to portray the issue as one of personal "guilt" but it is a question of the institutional obligations of the society, and of the American federal state, due to the damages of a huge criminal enterprise the country was founded on. Horowitz says that a majority of African-Americans today are "middle class." This is not true. According to polls, 71% of African-Americans describe themselves as "working class." As I said, Horowitz is unwilling to address the actual current circumstances of the African-American population.

Horowitz asserts, correctly, that slavery in Africa existed before the transport of slaves to the Western Hemisphere, and that some Africans profited from this trade. But this ignores the fact that the argument is about the profits created in the USA for economic elites during the period of slavery and the subsequent period of depressed black incomes in the south due to things like klan violence and lack of civil rights and debt peonage. It was the profiting off of slavery and its aftermath in the USA that bears upon the obligations of the government of the USA and American society. The role of some Africans in the slave trade is not relevant to that.

It's true that many people have immigrated to the USA since the abolition of slavery but it is an accepted principle that people who migrate here are not exempt from the country's obligations. A person who migrates here cannot get out of paying taxes to pay on the national debt by saying those debts were taken out before he or she arrived. It is true that many white people fought to liberate the slaves in the 19th century -- my own ancestors include white Christian abolitionists -- but that still doesn't address the economic issue of profiting off of slavery and off of forms of oppression that suppress the share of the product of their labor received by African-Americans. Of course, it is still a legitimate issue of how to own up to this obligation.

Honest engagement
IF you desire a way to look into the slave reparations issue, this is the only work, besides online scholarly and honest blogging, that will give anyone that is for or against it a hardline approach that cannot easily be ignored.It dispells the myths of what victimhnood is really defined as and calls all Americans of all colors and stripes to ignore the social engineerists that would control your life and tell you that you are avictim because of your current dna structure and skin color.There are only a small handful of times in history where slavery was even thought of as evil, and the American Unionist abolitionist movement was obviously the most successful, no matter what Joseph Ellis or Zinn say--it worked!There have been sins in America, but we all need to look to history and we will see that we have been the pinnacle of light that that has instituted feedoms that have bridged the gulf of history and have gone places with it that no ancient could ever have dreamed of.This book provides an honest, intellectual insight into the reasons why reparations only serve to hurt the African-American populus rather than lift them higher.It is a ploy to ensure their status as victims so that the coffers of liberal PACs may continue to be filled and the race card can be politically played as an offense of political war to preserve power.For further reading on past military leaders who've fought slavery, read The Soul of Battle, by Vitor Davis Hanson.Horowitz is known by his followers and share his path, but for those whose political power is threatened or those emotionally brainwashed under such demagogues, this book will invoke rage.A great work!!!

An engaging read
David Horowitz takes on a subject charged with emotion, as most race related subjects are, and does a very credible, factual job of arguing why we should not pay reparations.

I agree with many of the other reviewer here, however, in expresing my digust of our nations institutions of "higher learning."Should any minority receive the reception that Horowitz got at these schools, there would have been an immediate cry of racism.The fact that Horowitz is white and is arguing, factually, against a subject that the liberal elite have embraced, only ensures that his reception anywhere liberals hold sway would be uncivil, to say the least.

This book also illustrates another point I've read elsewhere...the point that, in general, conservatives argue logically, with facts that can be researched and supported, while liberals argue with emotion and name calling, especially of the "racist/sexist/fascist" variety.

Read this book, it's definately worth your time!

An Acheivement of Personal Courage under Rethoric Fire
Mr. Horowitz's commentary, " Uncivil Wars" is a very hard and open look at what may seem either wrong or right, depending on what sidelines of the political arena you may fall in. In it's own right, away from the emotional squabbles of the Race Issue, one that steps out of the box should ask the simple question as to who would be deemed as written to recieve these reperations and where would the money come from? If it came from the Tax-payers, then that would mean a good portion of America's money would go into a contraversial law suit with an origin that can be found so far in the past that most people who were directly related to the issue of Slavery are either dead or have been put to justice. < and their have been recent cold cases involving murders during the 60's that would attribute to this>

Now, having said that, although History recognizes the terrible crimes of slavery, it would be a stain upon the black community for putting a set price on the issue because then you are implying that your willing to walk away quiet at a price, a price which past civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King had died and fought so strongly for equal rights, without peddling for dollars and change --- because the fight cannot have a price placed upon it. It was a human tragety. It was a fight for man to be seen as equal in the eyes of the very nation he lived in -- as well as women. Are we as human beings, to measure inhumanity by a dollar ammount --- will it even fix the problem?

This is a very good book, very short yet to the point, and advise people who are intressted to read the other books that this author has written, and yes, it is true --- The facts in this book are presented on both sides, and it is up to you to decide. Its how a political book should be. ... Read more

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The late 1960s saw an extraordinary growth in the American nuclear industry: dozens of plants of unprecedented size were ordered throughout the country. Yet at the same time, public concern about the natural environment and suspicion of both government and industry increased dramatically. Containing the Atom is the first scholarly history of nuclear power regulation during those tumultuous years.J. Samuel Walker focuses on the activities of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, the agency entrusted with the primary responsibility for the safety of nuclear power, and shows that from the beginning the AEC faced a paradox: it was charged with both promoting and controlling the nuclear power industry. Out of this paradox grew severe tensions, which Walker discusses in detail. His balanced evaluation of the issues and the positions taken by the AEC and others makes this study an invaluable resource for all those interested in the continuing controversies that surround nuclear energy. ... Read more

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This study examines the relationship of the US Constitution and the enslavement of black Americans. ... Read more

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The debate surrounding the role and interpretation of international law wasof central importance during the Gulf War and its aftermath. This debate reachedthe headlines with alleged breaches of the Geneva Convention in the treatment ofprisoners of war, the damage caused by oil spillage into the Gulf, and theburning of Kuwaiti oilfields.

In November 1990, Peter Rowe assembled ateam of "watchers" who each took responsibility for monitoring a particular areaof international law during the Gulf War hostilities. The team included some ofthe most distinguished academics and practitioners in the field, and thiscollection brings together their analyses and conclusions. Gulf Warin International and English Law covers a wide range of central issues,from the liability for war crimes and media coverage to the protection of theenvironment and the role of the United Nations.

Contributors: Hazel M.Fox, David Garratt, Christopher Greenwood, Francoise J. Hampson, Anthony H.Hudson, Shaun Lyons, Hilaire McCoubrey, Michael Meyer, Gordon Risius, AdamRoberts Fba, Peter Rowe, David Travers, Bernadette Walsh, and MarcWeller.

A co-publication with Sweet and Maxwell