Jim Crow Moves North: The Battle over Northern School Segregation, 1865-1954

by Davison Douglas

Overview

Most observers have assumed that school segregation in the United States was exclusively a southern phenomenon. In fact, many northern communities, until recently, engaged in explicit "southern style" school segregation whereby black children were assigned to "colored" schools and white children to white schools. Davison Douglas examines why so many northern communities did engage in school segregation (in violation of state laws that prohibited such segregation) and how northern blacks challenged this illegal activity. He analyzes the competing visions of black empowerment in the northern black community as reflected in the debate over school integration.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521845649
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/24/2005
Series:	Cambridge Historical Studies in American Law and Society
Pages:	346
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

Davison M. Douglas is the Arthur B. Hanson Professor of Law at the William and Mary School of Law where he teaches courses in American constitutional law and history. From 1997–2004, he served as Director of the Institute of Bill of Rights Law at William and Mary. Douglas received a Ph.D. in American history (1992), a law degree (1983), and master's degree in religion (1983) from Yale University. He has written several articles and books dealing with American constitutional history, including Reading, Writing, and Race: The Desegregation of the Charlotte Schools (1995), Redefining Equality (1998) (edited, with Neal Devins), and articles in the Michigan Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, the Texas Law Review, and the UCLA Law Review. He has lectured on American constitutional law and history at universities throughout the United States, Africa, Asia, Australia, and Europe.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction; 2. The struggle for black education in the antebellum north; 3. Legislative reform: banning school segregation, 1865–90; 4. The spread of northern school segregation, 1890–1940; 5. Responding to the spread of northern school segregation: conflict within the black community, 1900–40; 6. The democratic imperative: the campaign against northern school segregation, 1940–54; 7. Conclusion.

Editorial Reviews

"…This is a valuable contribution as a historical study, as a commentary on contemporary questions about the best means of providing quality education to all children, and as an addition to a growing literature that is reassessing the impact of desegregation for African American children."
-Choice

"Eminently readable and thoughtfully constructed, Jim Crow Moves North is a welcome addition to the literature."
-TCRecord

"Douglas has provided a solid summary of the fight for school integration in the North, and in doing so he has broadened our understanding of the struggle against racial segregation in America."
-Shawn Leigh Alexander, Yale University, Register of the Knetucky Historical Society

"Of the many strengths of thsi book, one taht stands out is Douglas's ability to make all these issues relevant, even essential, to his account. It is tightly written and never digressive, despite its wide-ranging subject matter."
-Christopher W. Schmidt, Dartmouth College, Michigan Historical Review

"Douglas provides a useful background to the continuing effort to bring African American children and youth into the mainstream of American education and thus of our society."
-Charles L. Glenn, Boston University, American Historical Review

"Douglas's book...offers a significan contribution for scholars and readers interested in not only the association between the campaign to end segregated schools in the North and the US's racist society, but also the value of exploring African American's complex opinions on integration and black self-determination in general." -John Daves, African American Review

From the Publisher