Volume 51, Number 14 · September 23, 2004
What Happened to 'Brown'?
By Kathleen M. Sullivan
Silent Covenants: Brown Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform
by Derrick Bell
Oxford University Press, 230 pp., $25.00
Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality
by Richard Kluger, revised and expanded edition
Knopf, 865 pp., $45.00
All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half Century of Brown v. Board of Education
by Charles J. Ogletree Jr.
Norton, 365 pp., $25.95
When the justices of the United States Supreme Court travel abroad, their counterparts in other lands marvel at one thing above all else: their ability to have their decrees obeyed. In many nations, this is not a power taken for granted. Few images capture this point about the American constitutional system more powerfully than the stark news photographs of African-American students entering previously all-white public schools under National Guard escort after the Supreme Court's 1954 decision holding segregated public schools unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education. Walking with quiet dignity past jeering, taunting white crowds, those students' brave passage symbolized the supremacy of law over mob rule, and helped to cement the Court's reputation as a powerful institution standing against the majority.
Review, 5022 words
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