Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas

On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the unanimous Supreme Court decision in this case that declared segregation in the nation's public schools was illegal. Rejecting the ‘‘separate but equal'' yardstick handed down by the Court more than a half-century earlier in Plessy v. Ferguson , the Warren Court accepted the NAACP's argument that ‘‘separate'' was inherently unequal and thereby under-mined the self-esteem of the segregated. The following year, the Court called for implementation of desegregation ‘‘with all deliberate speed,'' but strong southern opposition as well as a disapproving response from President Eisenhower led to little integration until the 1960s.

Suggestions for Term Papers

Suggested Sources : See entries 9, 64, and 71 for related items.

REFERENCE SOURCES

African American Almanac . L. Mpho Mabunda, ed. Detroit : Gale, 1997. An excellent resource for almost any topic on black history.

African American Encyclopedia . Williams, Michael, ed. Tarrytown , NY : 1993, 8 vols. (6 vols. plus-2 vol. supplement). Extensively covers the

African American experience in the United States from the beginning to the present day.

Civil Rights in America : 1500 to the Present . Detroit : Gale, 1998. 2 vols. Broad coverage of ethnic, minority, and religious groups and the laws, people, events, court cases, and documents.

Encyclopedia of Civil Rights in America . David Bradley and Shelley F. Fishkin, eds. Armonk , NY : Sharpe, 1997. 3 vols. Well-organized reference source on human rights and civil liberties in the United States .

Historic U.S. Court Cases, 1660–1990 . John W. Johnson. New York : Garland , 1992. Cases summarized by legal categories. Contains the history of Supreme Court cases from Plessy v. Ferguson to Brown v. Board of Education . Also reviews state court cases.

GENERAL SOURCES

Brownell, Herbert. Advising Ike: The Memoir of Attorney General Herbert Brownell . Topeka : University of Kansas Press, 1993. Covers Ike, Earl Warren, Brown v. Board of Education , and the Civil Rights Act of 1957, among others.

Cecelski, David S. Along Freedom Road : Hyde County , North Carolina , and the Fate of Black Schools in the South . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994. Story of desegregation and how two black schools were preserved.

Douglas, Davidson M. Reading, Writing and Race: The Desegregation of the Charlotte Schools . Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1995. Looks at school desegregation as a social good in covering the history of desegregation from Brown v. Board of Education through the 1970s.

Douglas, William O. The Douglas Letters: Selections from the Private Papers of Justice William O. Douglas . Melvin Urofsky, ed. Bethesda, MD: Adler&Adler, 1988. Includes letters tracing unroutine decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade . The letters cast an interesting light on events such as Douglas's dispute with Frankfurter.

Harrison, Maureen, and Steve Gilbert, eds. Schoolhouse Decisions of the United States Supreme Court . San Diego: Excellent Books, 1997. Details significant Supreme Court decisions affecting schools.

Hornsby, Alton. Chronology of African American History . 2d ed. Detroit: Gale, 1997. Chronology updated through December 1996 relating the cultural experiences of African Americans.

Lerner, Max. Nine Scorpions in a Battle: Great Judges and Cases of the Supreme Court . New York: Arcade Publishing, 1994. A history and

analysis of the most influential judges and cases decided by the Supreme Court.

Pratt, Robert A. The Color of Their Skin: History of School Desegregation in Richmond, Virginia, 1954–1989 . Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1992. Covers racial discrimination in education, in particular, in Richmond, Virginia.

Wexler, Sanford. The Civil Rights Movement: An Eyewitness History . New York: Facts on File, 1996. Chronicles the history of the civil rights movement from Frederick Douglass through Brown v. Board of Education to the present day.

SPECIALIZED SOURCES

Fireside, Harvey, and Sarah Betsy Fuller. Brown v. Board of Education: Equal Schooling for All . Springfield, NJ: Enslows Publishing, 1994. A good legal history of the school desegregation cases, including historical context and subsequent legal developments. Part of the publisher's Landmark Supreme Court Cases series.

Martin, Waldo E., Jr. Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents . New York: St. Martin's, 1998. Details the most significant legal decision of the twentieth century, along with other relevant documents.

Orfield, Gary, and Susan Eaton. Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education . New York: New Press, 1996. Discusses how Supreme Court rulings in recent years have reversed Brown v. Board of Education into resegregation as the Supreme Court has chosen the path of judicial avoidance.

Wilson, Paul E. A Time to Lose: Representing Kansas in Brown v. Board of Education . Topeka: University of Kansas Press, 1995. Written by the lawyer responsible for upholding the separate-but-equal doctrine as well as the state's defense; examines the evolution of race relations since that time.

BIOGRAPHICAL SOURCES

Davis, Michael D., and Hunter R. Clark. Thurgood Marshall: Warrior at the Bar, Rebel on the Bench . New York, Carol Publishing, 1993. About the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court; covers his relationship to other members of the Court, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other notables.

AUDIOVISUAL SOURCES

Separate But Equal . Chicago: Britannica, 1981. 2 videocassettes. 193minute drama of Brown v. Board of Education featuring Sidney Poitier as Thurgood Marshall; Burt Lancaster plays John W. Davis, the opposing counsel, and Richard Kiley is Chief Justice Earl Warren, who rallied the Court to the landmark ruling.

WORLD WIDE WEB

Cozzens, Lisa. Welcome to African American History . July 20, 1998. http://www.watson.org/ ~lisa/blackhistory/html Well-developed expositi on and description of African American history by a high school teacher. Click on the table of contents providing an overview of the coverage, with Brown v. Board of Education under the category of ‘‘Early Civil Rights Struggle.''