Jim Crow's Children: The Broken Promise of the Brown Decision

by Peter Irons

Peter Irons, acclaimed historian and author of A People History of the Supreme Court , explores of one of the supreme court's most important decisions and its disappointing aftermath

In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court sounded the death knell for school segregation with its decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. So goes the conventional wisdom. Weaving together vivid portraits of lawyers and such judges as Thurgood Marshall and Earl Warren, sketches of numerous black children throughout history whose parents joined lawsuits against Jim Crow schools, and gripping courtroom drama scenes, Irons shows how the erosion of the Brown decision—especially by the Court’s rulings over the past three decades—has led to the “resegregation” of public education in America.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

The author of several books on the U.S. Supreme Court and constitutional litigation, Peter H. Irons is an American political activist, civil rights attorney, legal scholar, and Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego.

Reviews

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first 2/3 of the book were an engaging summary of the court cases leading up to and including Brown. Irons gets into the legal battles without condescending or descending into legalese.

The final portion of the book gets into the post-Brown era of busing and black-dominated urban schools. I felt that Irons strength was much more apparent in his Supreme Court analysis than in his present-day sociological discussion. Irons insists that schools are still segregated and that integration will lead to higher student rates of success. While I certainly agree with him that urban schools (really, most public schools) are sincerely in need of a makeover, I don't agree that race is the main root of (or solution to) these issues.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite that fact that huge majorities of Americans say they support the idea of school integration and celebrate Brown v Board of Education's ruling, schools remain massively segregated in our country and American's vehemently oppose any concrete action to remediate the problem and continue to "white flight" their way to racially unitary schools. This book examines the history of the legal attempts to remedy school segregation and the failure and broken promises in the years since. A sobering but vital and important read. 3.8 Martinie glasses

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

An informative, well written and accessible account of the litigation leading up to Brown v. Board and the subsequent efforts by lawyers and courts to flesh out the legal ending of segregation in schools. Irons lays out a convincing case (until 2000) for the continuing racial separation in American schools. Rated this book as a 4 instead of a 5 because of Iron's somewhat simplistic treatment of the causes of the achievement gap for African Americans. (Example: One chapter is titled "Doing the White Man's Thing") But definitely a read I would recommend!

[Marta E C R · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! Not an easy book to read, but so worth it to create a solid understanding of what the Brown decision did and did not accomplish, and how much work is still ahead of us as a nation. I'm grateful to have had a friend with whom to read, study, and discuss this book.

[Graham Seibert · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too complex of a problem for a single simple solution.

Mr. Irons is an advocate. A graduate of Harvard Law school. He does a magnificent job of presenting the history of Jim Crow from a legal perspective. It is a splendid refresher course in High School Civics: The Dred Scott decision that negroes were property; Plessy vs. Ferguson establishing the doctrine of "Separate but Equal," and the myriad cases argued by Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP leading up to the desegregation decision in "Brown vs. Board of Education."

Segregation advocates recognized even fifty years ago that their arguments for separate schools were weak in light of the 14th Amendment. The surprise is the degree to which the Warren Court took psychological testimony, the self esteem argument, into account. Separate schools, they concluded, could not be equal simply because of the stigma that separation imposed on black children. Full and equal citizens must enjoy the right to participate fully and equally in the society.
The book traces the progress of desegregation from 1954 onward, including busing and other measures to force integration. Mr. Irons laments the limited success of these measures in achieving their objective, equal educational and financial achievement by blacks in an integrated society.
Why, then, do differences persist? Mr. Irons argues that ongoing differences result from continued de facto separation of the races in schools, the inferior economic status of blacks, and the high incidence of single mothers among the black population. These situations perpetuate a cycle of lower expectations, lower self-esteem and lower achievement among blacks. Take them away, he suggests, and blacks would perform at the same level as everyone else in society.

Mr. Irons takes the obligatory swipe at "The Bell Curve," leading with the phrase "Virtually all reputable scholars reject claims, most recently leveled by Richard Herrenstein and Charles Murray.....who conducted no research of their own." It is true that they saw their task as compilation.. They acknowledged that the relationships among social status, income, intelligence and race are vastly complex. Their goal was to bring together and analyze all the significant statistical data from diverse studies in many countries over many decades. Though one would not know it from the reception it got, the book is not even primarily about race. Mr. Irons did not footnote his claim about "all reputable scholars." The only one he cites, Richard Nisbett, has not written a book on the subject, only a 16-page tract entitled "Race Genetics and IQ," ..It cites a handful of studies with limited numbers of subjects dating mostly from the 1930s to the 1970s. Mr. Irons chooses to ignore a number of published authors he must regard as disreputable, among them William Shockley, Arthur Jensen, and Philippe Rushton. Whatever their shortcomings, they have published books to offer their thoughts for public scrutiny. Mr. Irons should not have ducked the chance to refute them.

Mr. Irons is totally focused on U.S. society. The book would be richer, though his thesis would be more difficult to support, if he were to consider the situation of blacks elsewhere in the world. He would find that whatever their situation with regard to education and income, the degree of equality between blacks and whites in the U.S far exceeds that in any other part of the world, including Africa, Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America. Jim Crow is a weak explanation for the status of blacks in France or Haiti.

Thinkers throughout the history of our country, including great minds such as deTocqueville Twain and Mencken have devoted a great deal of thought to the natures of the races and relationships between them. While there is no agreement, all would say it is tremendously complex. School integration and busing were simple ideas that had their opportunity to resolve the situation. They didn't. We can thank Mr. Irons for a wonderful history lesson. Sadly, his thinking is trapped in his own history.

[LaShana Claude]

Promising! Ruby Gates- Promises! lol, what teacher could ever promise anything except to herself and that is to teach herself. Sitting in a classroom where you do not belong is the disaster. Home schools were fine. But we had to have something because the government said we could have it. But they had to be there playing a game of cat and mouse, smoking and walking around like the disaster was in the fact that no one gets an education when they demand it. Ruby was a pawn floating graciously to the white house corridor to meet the hate of Phyllis Wheatley who probably didn't want her there. Disaster everywhere when the government makes the decisions. Earth has the answer. I never saw one man who knew as much as me. Well maybe one but he died after sitting around waiting for the truth to appear about a military record. laughed so hard I nearly cried. I'll read it only because I get nostalgic for little heros with briefcases. i read it and watch Falling Down featuring Michael Douglas.

[David02139 · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good but somewhat depressing book on how the cases before the Supreme Court during the Warren years. Very detailed and interesting in how the cases made their way to the Supreme Court and also how many of the later cases came about and were ruled on when the South did not move to integrate their schools. Many moving passages in the book, the one that stayed with me is "One salient fact underscores this book's discussion of Jim Crow Education over the past two centuries: there has not been a single year in which at least half of the nation's black children attended schools that were largely white".

Given how the Burgeons court rolled back most if not all the gains, it leave one to wonder what our current Roberts court will undue.

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

On balance, a good book