October 20. 2015
The Development and Execution of the Strategy to Reverse Plessy v. Ferguson
& Beyond
Co-Captains: Newbern & Passino; Reporter: Chastity Goodner
Liason: Justice Wm. C. Koch, Jr.
Team Leaders:
Jimmy Balser, Robb Bieglow, Seannalyn Brandmier,
Kimberly Faye, Randy Kinnard, Brent Lankford, John
Manson, Hon. Aleta Trauger
PROGRAM & MATERIALS OVERVIEW
Introduction.
The October 20, 2015, program addresses Charles Hamilton Houston - Harvard Law
School graduate, Dean of Howard Law school, and the gifted architect of the strategy to overturn
Plessy v. Feguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) - and the steps that he and his extraordinary associates
took in their journey to Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 495 (1954). After two
arguments in successive years, a unanimous Court in Brown held that separate is not equal and is
a doctrine that has no place under the Constitution. Brown, decided almost 60 years after Plessy
and following Houston’s death, represented both the culmination of Houston’s campaign and the
commencement of radical, tumultuous changes in the fabric of American society.
This memo supplements the program and provides (1) a brief discussion of Plessy and the
problems it presented for Houston; (2) a thumbnail sketch of the legal history leading to Plessy
and the post-Plessy environment for African-Americans, additional barriers to Houston’s
campaign to change the law and the lives of those he represented; (3) an introduction to postBrown present-day problems in metropolitan educational systems, including Nashville’s; (4) a
brief acknowledgement of Houton’s extraordinary undertaking; and (5) a list of additional
sources of information not provided in attached materials with respect to (1) Houston and (b)
present-day post-Brown issues.
Plessy in a nutshell.
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) held that distinguishing between AfricanAmericans and whites, and the enforced separation of those races, did not violate the Equal
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Protection Clause so long as in maintaining such distinctions all were treated equally. Plessy’s
holding aside, the rationale of Plessy reflected much more deep-seated legal, social, political, and
perceptional problems that Houston faced in his campaign to change the law.
According to the Court, plaintiffs’ action was bottomed on two serious
misunderstandings. First, the plaintiffs’ belief that the “enforced separation of the two races
stamps the colored race with the badge of inferiority,” was, in fact, a figment of plaintiffs’
imaginations. 163 U.S. at 551. There was nothing in the act suggesting the required racial
separation was intended to convey that African-American’s were inferior, and such a
construction only existed “because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.” Id.
Second, plaintiffs misunderstood what they could accomplish legally, incorrectly and
naively assuming that
social prejudices may be overcome by legislation, and that equal rights cannot be
secured to the negro except by an enforced commingling of the two races. We
cannot accept this proposition. If the two races are to meet upon terms of social
equality, it must be the result of natural affinities, a mutual appreciation of each
other's merits, and a voluntary consent of individuals.
Id. To be clear, said Plessy:
Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts, or to abolish distinctions
based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in
accentuating the difficulties of the present situation. If the civil and political rights
of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If
one race be inferior to the other socially, the constitution of the United States
cannot put them upon the same plane.
Id. at 551-52.
Plessy in historical context and Houston’s Sisyphean task
It is difficult to read Plessy without wincing. It was the Court, not plaintiffs who were
naïve; and, in fact and in law, African-Americans had no choice with respect to the badge they
wore from the outset. Contrary to Plessy, it was not their decision to make; nor did they, being
human beings, have much freedom in choosing how to feel . . . or to perceive. 1 Moreover, the
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Authority for the proposition that individual and groups are damaged by actions and words which demean them,
while undoubtedly extensive, is beyond the scope of the team’s charge. In the trial court in Brown, for example,
Kenneth Clark demonstrated the disturbing fact that when asked to choose between a white and black doll with
respect to their preferences, African-American children chose the white doll. The effect of being demeaned or
ridiculed is, quite frankly, an experience that most have in life, and one that the Plessy Justices could not
reasonably have been insensitive to as people. That feelings of lack of self-worth and humiliation can be created by
disparaging word and actions is almost common sense. As Lyndon Johnson responded when asked about the moral
necessity of the 1964 Civil Rights Act “A man has a right not to be insulted in front of his children.” David
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condescending lecture to plaintiffs on the fecklessness of attempting to eradicate “racial
instincts” and to engender peace and love in the hearts of all ignored not only African-American
history, but what the lawsuit meant. African-Americans had been buried under constitutional
jurisprudence, federal laws, state and federal laws that enabled, if such laws did not encourage
the uncivilized, if not barbaric treatment of men, women, and children of color.
The history and forces that Plessy ignored were the barriers to Houston’s success, and the
recognition of both the rights and human dignity of those whom he represented. Looking back,
the obstacles Houston faced appear insurmountable. It is difficult to understand how they did not
appear so to Houston, or how he decided where to start in changing the world for the better, not
just for his clients, but for us all. The following crude and grossly inadequate “history” attempts
to identify a few of the formidable forces Houston faced, not only to refresh recollections, but to
underscore Houston’s achievements.
So, when African-Americans arrived in this country in 1619, they did so as slaves . . .
chattle. At the time of the discussion leading to the adoption of the Constitution, which doesn’t
expressly mention slavery, the status of African-Americans and slavery were hotly contested,
incorporated in one way or another in Art. I, §§2 cl. 3 and 9 cl.1 and Art. IV, §2 cl. 3. AfricanAmericans, by in large, remained chattle. The two most contentious constitutional compromises
proved to be those related to Art. 1, §9 cl.1, limiting the expansion of slavery, and Art. IV, §2 cl.
3, which basically prevented the state and federal courts from recognizing the independence,
individual dignity, and rights of slaves who had somehow made it to freedom. From the outset of
this nation, the moral and legal issues presented by Art. IV, §2 cl. 3 to the courts were gutwrenching, and often times, as in Dred Scott and Plessy among many other state and federal
court decisions¸ courts were found wanting, at best. See Robert M. Cover, Justice Accused:
Antislavery and the Judicial Process (Yale University Press 1975).
To borrow from Langston Hughes, from the founding of this country through the onset of
the civil war, the dreams of African-Americans as citizens of this country were deferred, with
tragic consequences for us all. In Dred Scott v.Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1856), Scott, a
slave, filed an action in Missouri seeking his freedom and prevailed, only to lose in in the United
States Supreme Court. Chief Justice Roger Taney put the question before the Court in Scott as:
Bromwich, Politics by other Means: Higher Education and Group Thinking at 157 (Yale Univ. Press 1994).
Certainly, this would extend to the day to day indignities to which African-American parents and children were
exposed, such as having to cross the street for a white person on the sidewalk, and explaining to a child why this was
so; being seated in a special section of a bus or movie theater, or explaining why this was so; being unable to enter
public buildings, or being required to do so through separate entrances, or being unable to enter restaurants or drug
stores or to sit at lunch counters, and on and on. See generally Patricia Williams, Seeing a Color-Blind Future: the
Paradox of Race, (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1998).
To the extent people, including African-Americans, are adversely affected by being slighted, humiliated, or
demeaned in day-to-day encounters, presumably statutes, ordinances, rules, and regulations that officially require,
promote or endorse such discrimination by governments and communities are more pernicious.
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Can a negro, whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves,
become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence
by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all the
rights, and privileges, and immunities, guarantied by that instrument to the
citizen? One of which rights is the privilege of suing in a court of the United
States in the cases specified in the Constitution.
60 U.S. at 403.
In holding that Scott had no privilege of citizenship, and consequently no privilege to
invoke the jurisdiction of the federal courts because he was not a member of the political
community of the United States, the Supreme Court conducted an extensive historical and legal
review including investigating the status of African Americans that prevailed “in the civilized
and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence.” Taney
concluded that:
They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior
order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or
political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man
was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to
slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article
of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it. This opinion
was at that time fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race. It
was regarded as an axiom in morals as well as in politics, which no one thought of
disputing, or supposed to be open to dispute; and men in every grade and position
in society daily and habitually acted upon it in their private pursuits, as well as in
matters of public concern, without doubting for a moment the correctness of this
opinion
Id. at 407 (Emphasis added).
Taney’s analysis of the circumstances of African-Americans under state law painted an
even less rosy picture:
The legislation of the States therefore shows, in a manner not to be mistaken, the
inferior and subject condition of that race at the time the Constitution was
adopted, and long afterwards, throughout the thirteen States by which that
instrument was framed; and it is hardly consistent with the respect due to these
States, to suppose that they regarded at that time, as fellow-citizens and members
of the sovereignty, a class of beings whom they had thus stigmatized; whom, as
we are bound, out of respect to the State sovereignties, to assume they had
deemed it just and necessary thus to stigmatize, and upon whom they had
impressed such deep and enduring marks of inferiority and degradation.
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Id. at 416 (Emphasis added). Based on the decision in Dred Scott and Taney’s rendition
of the historical view of the status of blacks, it seems reasonable to conclude that at the
time of the civil war, things were not going all that well for African-Americans.
While the post-civil war enactment of Amendments 13, 14, and 15 was intended by some
as a new day - a declaration of equality under law for all persons - these constitutional
amendments didn’t work out all that well for African-Americans either. . . or at least for a long,
long time. Indeed, there were many who did not support these amendments. And many of those
were in positions of power in federal, state and local governments. For example in his 1867
annual address to Congress, President Andrew Johnson said that African-Americans had “less
capacity for government than any other race of people," that they would "lapse into barbarism" if
left to their own devices, and that giving them the vote would result in a "tyranny such as this
continent has never yet witnessed." See Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial
Terror at 7 (EJI 2015: Report Summary) (Lynching).
Like the decades from this country’s inception to the civil war, the time from the civil
war up to Plessy, and for decades after Plessy was decided, the hope of African-Americans for
individual dignity and political and social equality was deferred: the raisin in the sun blistered,
boiled, and scabbed over. Historical support for this conclusion would fill the wing of a library.
A few examples must suffice. Between 1880 and 1940, lynching of African-American men,
women, and children peaked. Lynching at 3. Between 1877 and 1950, four years before Brown
was decided, there were 3959 lynchings of African-Americans in 12 Southern states, many of
which were tolerated by state and federal officials. Lynching 3, 4-5. Doubtless some were
sponsored by local governmental officials.
From approximately 1932 to 1972, the United States Public Health Service, including
physicians with Ivy League educations, local physicians, state health departments, and even draft
boards conducted an experiment with African-American sharecroppers to “study” what would
happen if men (and their families) were not treated for syphilis. See James Jones, Bad Blood:
The Tuskegee Syphillis Experiment (N.Y. Free Press1981). Participants were induced to
participate by the offer for “free treatment,” along with hot meals during follow-up visits. The
men were not told that they had syphilis, but that they had “bad blood.” They were falsely told
that they were being treated, when they were not. The wives and children of the men were never
told. And those who survived for 25 years, and many did not, were given a certificate, personally
signed by the United States Attorney General, thanking them for their participation and offering
the opportunity for funeral payments of up to $50 in return for a signed consent to have an
autopsy performed. When the study surface, one physician said, “there was no racial side to this.
. . . It just happened to be in a black community.” H. Jack Geiger, “An experiment with lives”
New York Times Section 7, p. 9 June 21, 1981)2 Hmm.
2
See
https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/06/specials/jones-blood.html
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True to Langston’s Hughes’ mordant poetic prediction, in the late 1950’s and 1960’s the
deferred dreams of millions exploded. Murders of civil rights workers and those in sympathy
skyrocketed; churches were bombed, civil rights and children killed; sanctuaries of those in
sympathy were bombed or razed by fire; and so on . . . and so on. See, e.g., Melissa Fay Greene,
The Temple Bombing (Da Capo Press ed. 1996).
To be sure, much of the explosion of violence in the civil rights movement occurred after
the decision in Brown and after Houston had died. But psychological and physical violence,
manifestations of hatred and contempt, were the life blood of segregation. Most certainly
Houston and his associates experienced personal fear and the threat of imminent violence, as for
example, by lawyers in the campaign having to be spirited into and out of southern courthouses,
in the trunks of cars, in the dark of night. And the plain fact is that we are all awash in history,
centuries of it, if not millennia. There is no escaping it. See, e.g., Charles Taylor, A Secular Age
(Belknap Press 2007); see also Robert Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution (Harvard 2011).
Thus, the philosophy, theology, government, social structure, technology, literature, poetry,
music, science, religious beliefs, and cosmology of the past affect each of us as we walk through
life in countless perceptible and imperceptible ways, in virtually everything we do. Houston was
no exception. Nor were African-Americans. It is for this and many other reasons that Plessy
was so off base; and why Houston faced the impossible task of moving unmovable mountains.
See them big plantations burning
Hear the cracking of the whips
Smell that sweet magnolia blooming
See the ghosts of slavery ships.
I can hear them tribes a-moaning
Hear that undertaker’s bell
Nobody can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell.
Bob Dylan, Blind Willie McTell.
Brown redux.
For many reasons, Brown did not prescribe a remedy. Its direction that schools eliminate
segregation “with all deliberate speed,” was Delphic. The problems faced by those responsible
for carrying out the Supreme Court’s direction were complex, even for those who sought to do so
in good faith and who worked with those who were in sympathy or agreement. Sadly, then, postBrown litigation across the country continued for decades, as did the all-too-often failed attempts
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by state and local governmental officials to provide equal educational opportunities for AfricanAmerican children.
Then, beginning in the early 1990’s the Supreme Court said, for good reasons as well as
bad, that federal courts needed to get out of the business of overseeing the implementation of
school desegregation plans. Thus, when a school system could demonstrate that it had
abandoned the dual system of intentional segregation, the courts were to declare the system
“unitary,” and dismiss the litigation. See Freeman v. Pitts, 503 U.S. 467, 487 (1992). Without
discussing the wisdom of Freeman, it is a fact beyond principled debate that intentional
discrimination that affected schools systems’ ability to provide equal educational opportunities
for African-American children arose from other sources; school systems lacked the authority or
ability to address such sources; and they also lacked the resources to properly identify causes,
much less provide a remedy for the inequalities in education for students that were aggravated by
these other sources.
With respect to the significantly deficient performance of African-American children,
children of color, and children from economically deprived homes, evidence in metropolitan
districts across the country decades after Brown indicates that the schools are “resegregating”3
although not in a way that is or was remediable under the legal formulae arising out of Brown.
The causes for this “resegregation” and the continuing inability of state and local officials to
meaningfully address it are manifold. The experience of the Davidson and Metropolitan School
system is illustrative of problems across the county. And the facts are more than midly
troublesome for those here and elsewhere..
In 1956, shortly after Brown, Kelley v. Bd. of Educ. of City of Nashville, was filed in
district court in Nashville. See Kelley v. Bd. of Educ. of City of Nashville, 139 F.Supp. 578
(M.D. Tenn. 1956) (per curiam) (three-judge panel). In 1998, 42 years later, the federal district
court declared Metro’s school system unitary. During that 42 year period, ink was spilled by the
barrel; issues were hotly contested; and, perhaps, if not too much of a stretch, cooperation was
not the watchword through the decades. See Kelley v. Bd. of Educ. Of City of Nashville,
Davidson Co., Tennessee, 270 F.2d 209 (6th Cir. 1959); Kelley v. Metro. Co. Bd. of Educ. of
Nashville and Davidson Co., Tennessee, 293 F.Supp. 485 (M.D. Tenn. 1968); Kelley v. Metro.
Co. Bd. of Educ. of Nashville and Davidson Co., Tennessee, 317 F.Supp. 980 (M.D. Tenn. 1970);
Kelley v. Metro. Co. Bd. of Educ. of Nashville and Davidson Co., Tennessee , 436 F.2d 856 (6th
Cir. 1970); Kelley v. Metro. Co. Bd. of Educ. of Nashville and Davidson Co., Tennessee, 463
F.2d 732 (6th Cir. 1972) (given deliberate segregation Bd had obligation to take into account
population shifts in presenting a plan for a unitary system); Kelley v. Metro. Co. Bd. of Educ. of
Nashville and Davidson Co., Tennessee, 372 F.Supp. 528 (M.D. Tenn. 1973); Kelley v. Metro.
3
Language too often fails, as Betrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and others have made so clear. It fails here,
too, because the notion of segregation arises from legal constructs made useful in Brown, but that have become
increasingly less serviceable in the 21st century. Although “segregation” is not the best or most precise descriptor, it
must serve here for this cursory review.
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Co. Bd. of Educ. of Nashville and Davidson Co., Tennessee, 372 F. Supp. 540 (M.D. Tenn
1973); Kelley v. Metro. Co. Bd. of Educ. of Nashville and Davidson Co., Tennessee, 479 F.Supp.
120 (M.D. Tenn. 1979); Kelley v. Metro. Co. Bd. of Educ. of Nashville and Davidson Co.,
Tennessee, 479 F.2d 810 (6th Cir. 1973) (aff’g Judge Morton’s grant of motion disqualify based
on continuing responsibility to administer equitable decree which he had entered aff’d); Kelley v.
Metro. Co. Bd. of Educ. of Nashville and Davidson Co., Tennessee, 492 F.Supp. 167 (M.D.
Tenn. 1980); Kelley v. Metro. Co. Bd. of Educ. of Nashville and Davidson Co., Tennessee, 511
F.Supp. 1363 (M.D. Tenn. 1981); Kelley v. Metro. Co. Bd. of Educ. of Nashville and Davidson
Co., Tennessee, 687 F.2d 814 (6th Cir. 1982) (aff’g in part and rev’g in part 511 F.Supp. 1363);
Kelley v. Metro. Co. Bd. of Educ. of Nashville and Davidson Co., Tennessee, 558 F.Supp. 468
(M.D. Tenn. 1983); Kelley v. Metro. Co. Bd. of Educ. of Nashville and Davidson Co., Tennessee,
572 F.Supp. 317 (M.D. Tenn. 1983) (school board’s plan approved over 25 years after action
commenced); Kelley v. Metro. Co. Bd. of Educ. of Nashville and Davidson Co., Tennessee, 615
F.Supp. 1139 (M.D. Tenn. 1985) (injunction mandating that the State desist from obstructing or
refusing to participate in desegregation plan); Kelley v. Metro. Co. Bd. of Educ. of Nashville and
Davidson Co., Tennessee, 773 F.2d 677 (6th Cir. 1985)(en banc); Kelley v. Metro. Co. Bd. of
Educ. of Nashville and Davidson Co., Tennessee, 836 F.2d 986 (6th Cir. 1987) (rev’g 615
F.Supp. 1139).
Fourteen years after the Metro schools system was declared unitary, in 2012, Judge Sharp
rendered an opinion in Spurlock v. Metro. Govt. of Nashville and Davidson Co. et al., No. 3:09cv-00756, 2012 WL 3064251 (M.D. Tenn. Jul. 27, 2012), aff’d sub nom Spurlock v. Fox, 716
F.3d 383 (6th Cir.), cert. denied 134 S. Ct. 436 (2013). Plaintiffs lost. The Sixth Circuit
affirmed. Yet, in the course of his opinion Judge Sharp observed many, troublesome
deficiencies with respect to individual schools and the education attainments of AfricanAmerican children, those of color, and those from economically deprived families. In the course
of doing so, Judge Sharp stated that:
Despite the rhetoric of the School Board and administrators about making every
school in the District a good school, the reality is that many District schools are
poor schools and have been that way for a considerable amount of time. Over the
last decade, MNPS has obtained consistently poor marks in the area of student
performance, an outcome that has disproportionately affected African–American
students in the Pearl–Cohn Cluster.
Spurlock, 2012 WL 3064251, at *17. Judge Sharp went on to say that:
The benchmarks consider test results in math and reading, as well as graduation
and attendance rates. . . . In terms of difficulty, Tennessee's benchmarks rank
forty-sixth out of the fifty states. . . . Despite these relatively lenient benchmarks,
MNPS has repeatedly fallen short. . . . . MNPS was one of the first two districts in
Tennessee to reach “Corrective Action” status.
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Id. at *19 (record citations omitted).
Judge Sharp concluded after extensively reviewing the record evidence and the studies
pointing to some of the sources of the patent, palpable defects in the school system, that there
was nothing he could do.
The Court has surveyed the Supreme Court's jurisprudence and social science
literature to make the following point: unfortunately, the big-picture problems
confronting public education in Nashville are beyond the scope of the question
presented for the Court's resolution in this case.
****
The Court does not have the authority, however, to integrate Nashville's
neighborhoods either by income or by race, nor is the Court empowered to
compel academic improvement among students from low-income families.
Indeed, the Supreme Court has made clear that it is not even the Court's
responsibility to ensure the racial integration of Nashville's schools in perpetuity
Id. at *30.
Nashville, Tennessee, including the surrounding metropolitan area, is one of the most
prosperous communities in the United States. It is the center of State government. Yet the
educational system is failing significant numbers of children sixty years after Brown. Few, if
any, of the parents who live in the area do not deem the welfare of their children to be their
paramount concern. And, while many of those parents can afford to take their children out of the
public school system, or afford to live in an area where there are good public schools, many
more have no such choice. So, they are forced to watch their children flail and fail in an
educational system that may in fact work against them. Both the United States District Court
and the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit have said that the law provides these
parents and their children no hand up.
Yet, as complex as the problems facing Metro’s educational system are, they do not begin
to mirror the impossible barriers that Houston faced when he started his campaign. Like
Houston, we can identify the sources of the problem with unequal educational. Like Houston, we
can aggressively address the issues. To borrow from Brown we in the community should do so,
and help to do so, with all deliberate speed. It is a disservice to the memory of Houston, and
more importantly to those whom he represented, to proceed otherwise.
A word about Charles Hamilton Houston.
The program will review Charles Houston and his strategy to overturn Plessy. Much
about this man, however, cannot be compressed into a short program. The team, in the course of
investigating Houston, learned considerably more that it is worth knowing. The most useful
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compilation of what he and others did is contained in Richard Kluger’s epic history, Simple
Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality
(Vintage 2004). It is a book anyone interested in the past history of racial educational inequality,
or the present disparities, should read
There is something else that the team learned about Houston that approaches the
ineffable. That is, while he was certainly a legal genius, and a legal strategist and technician
beyond compare, he was also morally and physically courageous in ways difficult to imagine. In
these senses, in reading about Houston and his goal, it was hard not to make comparisons to the
mythological Prometheus, not with respect to Prometheus’ tragic end, as depicted by
Aeschaylus’s, or the somewhat less tragic end Shelly portrayed over 2000 years later, but with
respect to the extraordinary undertaking of both.
Like Prometheus’ challenge to the gods, Houston’s campaign against duly constituted
authorities, a culture of racism deeply imbedded in the fabric of this county, and constitutional
decisions that were openly demeaning to African-American citizens was an impossible
undertaking on its face. Like Prometheus, Houston somehow succeeded despite impossible
odds. Most importantly, like Prometheus, who challenged the gods on behalf of humanity,
Houston sought to improve the lot of all African-Americans in the country, if not all citizens.
Houston was Promethean in the best sense of the metaphor. To the extent that each of us
lives in a much better world because of Charles Hamilton Houston, we have a duty to ensure that
his aim is accomplished, here in Metro. Doing so presents much less formidable obstacles and
requires significantly less courage. Most importantly, it would provide a significant pool of
talented, creative, hopeful children whose abilities are presently being squandered for no purpose
whatsoever.
Materials.
Charles Hamilton Houston
In addition to attachments, see:
Leland Ware, “Setting the State for Brown: The Develoment and Implementation of the
NAACP’s School Desegregation Campaign, 1930—1950,” 52 Mercer L.Rev. 631 (2001)
Genna McNeil, “Before Brown: Reflections on Historical Context and Vision,” 52 Am. U. L.Rev
1431 (2003)
Leland Ware, “Educational Equity and Brown v. Board of Education: Fifty Years of School
Desegregation in Deleware,” 47 How. L.J. 299 (2004)
Kenneth Mack, “Rethinking Civil Rights Lawyering and Politics in the Era before Brown,” 115
Yale L.J. 256 (2005)
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Post-Brown, Present Day Educational Issues
In addition to attachments, see:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with (failed
metropolitan desegregation efforts in Missouri and accidental success)
Catherine E. Veninga. Road scholars: School busing and the politics of integration in Seattle.
Geography PhD Dissertation, University of Washington, 2005. University of Washington Dept.
of History 2014 Dissertations4
Ansle Erickson, Making the Unequal Metropolis: School Desegregation and Its Limits
(Available from Amazon March 2016) (focus on Nashville)
4
http://depts.washington.edu/history/graduate-studies/recent-dissertations
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