Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement

by Michael J. Klarman

Overview

In this abridged, paperback edition of his much-acclaimed, Bancroft Prize-winning From Jim Crow to Civil Rights, Michael J. Klarman has compressed his study of the Supreme Court's rulings on race into a tight focus around one major case-Brown v. Board of Education. Klarman goes behind the scenes to examine the justices' deliberations and recaps his famous backlash thesis, arguing that Brown was more important for mobilizing southern white opposition to change than for encouraging civil rights protest and that it was the resulting violence that transformed northern opinion and led to the landmark legislation of the 1960s. Klarman also sheds light on broader questions such as how racial attitudes change over time; how much judicial decisions depend on legal, political, and personal considerations; and the relationship between Supreme Court decisions and social change. Klarman's brilliant analysis of this landmark case makes the pathbreaking arguments of his original work accessible to a broader audience of general readers and students.

About the Author:
Michael J. Klarman is the James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law and Professor of History at the University of Virginia

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198042006
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	07/31/2007
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Michael J. Klarman is the James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law and Professor of History at the University of Virginia, where he has taught since 1987.

Table of Contents

Introduction     ix
The Jim Crow Era     3
World War II     27
Brown v. Board of Education     55
Brown II and Subsequent Desegregation Developments     79
Brown's Direct Effects     105
Brown's Indirect Effects     125
Brown's Backlash     149
Why Massive Resistance?     175
Brown, Violence, and Civil Rights Legislation     189
Conclusion     213
Note on Sources     233
Notes     235
Select Bibliography     263
Index     273

Editorial Reviews

"Klarman's study is a stunning achievement, a work of enormous ambition that sheds new light on much discussed topics. This abridgement will prove indispensable for courses in American constitutional history, constitutional law, and the history of American race relations."—Clayborne Carson, Director, Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute, Stanford University

"[B]ristles with incisive commentary while remaining accessible to general readers. It is the premiere treatment of this key development in modern American life."—Randall Kennedy, Harvard Law School

"Michael Klarman's magisterial From Jim Crow to Civil Rights was a brilliant work of both legal interpretation and social and political history. This abridged version will be especially suitable for undergraduate history classes and for a more popular audience."—James Patterson, Ford Foundation Professor of History, Brown University

"From Jim Crow to Civil Rights is the first great and indispensable work of American constitutional history in the twenty-first century. This abridged version makes this important work available for use in undergraduate classes on the Supreme Court, judicial politics, American politics, civil rights, and political change. Highly recommended."—Howard Gillman, Professor of Political Science, History and Law, UCLA

From the Publisher