Book Review by Carl Tobias
Brown v. Board of Education may be the most critical opinion that the United States Supreme Court has ever issued. A half century ago, Thurgood Marshall and his colleagues convinced the justices to overturn the six-decade-old precedent in Plessy v. Ferguson, which had upheld the constitutionality of separate but equal facilities. Newly appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren concomitantly persuaded all the Court's members to join the May 1954 Brown decision that invalidated separate but equal public education. This case and the 1955 opinion in Brown II, which required that public schools desegregate with “all deliberate speed,” have remained significant and controversial since their issuance.
As we mark the fiftieth anniversary of Brown, the decision's scrutiny will only intensify. An early account, which promises to be one of the finest, is Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (Troubled Legacy). That volume is the first installment in the new series, which is titled Pivotal Moments in American History, published by Oxford University Press. The book's author, James T. Patterson, the Ford Foundation Professor of History at Brown University, earned the Bancroft Prize in History for his prior monograph, Grand Expectations: The United States 1945-1974.
These ideas make salient Professor Patterson's publication of Troubled Legacy and mean his valuable contribution to illuminating this crucial Court determination warrants analysis. My review undertakes that effort. I first descriptively assess the volume, finding that it elucidates appreciation of Brown's import and the legacy which the opinion has left. The review then evaluates the book's many virtues. I conclude with recommendations for the future.
About the Author
Carl Tobias. Williams Professor, University of Richmond School of Law.
Citation
78 Tul. L. Rev. 2321 (2004)