Americans were riveted to their television sets in 1957, when a
violent mob barred black students from entering Little Rock's
Central High School and faced off against paratroopers sent by a
reluctant President Eisenhower. That set off a firestorm of protest
throughout the nation and ultimately led to the Supreme Court's
landmark decision in Cooper v. Aaron, reaffirming Brown v. Board of
Education's mandate for school integration "with all deliberate
speed" and underscoring the supremacy of federal and constitutional
authority over state law.
Noted scholar Tony Freyer, arguably our nation's top authority
on this subject, now provides a concise, lucid, and eminently
teachable summary of that historic case and shows that it paved the
way for later civil rights victories. He chronicles how the Little
Rock school board sought court approval to table integration
efforts and how the black community brought suit against the
board's watered-down version of compliance. The board's request was
denied by a federal appeals court and taken to the Supreme Court,
where the unanimous ruling in Cooper reaffirmed federal law-but
left in place the maddening ambiguities of "all deliberate
speed."
While other accounts have focused on the showdown on the
schoolhouse steps, Freyer takes readers into the courts to reveal
the centrality of black citizens' efforts to the origins and
outcome of the crisis. He describes the work of the Little Rock
NAACP--with its Legal Defense Fund led by Thurgood Marshall and
Wiley Branton--in defining the issues and abandoning gradualism in
favor of direct confrontation with the segregationist South. He
also includes the previously untold account of Justice William
Brennan's surprising influence upon Justice Felix Frankfurter's
controversial concurring opinion, which preserved his own
"deliberate speed" wording from Brown.
With Cooper, the "well morticed high wall" of segregation had
finally cracked. As the most important test of Brown, which
literally contained the means to thwart its own intent, it presaged
the civil rights movement's broader nonviolent mass action
combining community mobilization and litigation to finally defeat
Jim Crow. It was not only a landmark decision, but also a turning
point in America's civil rights struggle.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
