The NAACP's Legal Strategy against Segregated Education, 1925-1950

by Mark V. Tushnet

The NAACP's fight against segregated education--the first public interest litigation campaign--culminated in the 1954 Brown decision. While touching on the general social, political, and economic climate in which the NAACP acted, Mark V. Tushnet emphasizes the internal workings of the organization as revealed in its own documents. He argues that the dedication and the political and legal skills of staff members such as Walter White, Charles Hamilton Houston, and Thurgood Marshall were responsible for the ultimate success of public interest law. This edition contains a new epilogue by the author that addresses general questions of litigation strategy, the persistent question of whether the Brown decision mattered, and the legacy of Brown through the Burger and Rehnquist courts.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

264 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1987

About the author

A specialist in constitutional law and theory, including comparative constitutional law, Mark Victor Tushnet is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Emeritus at Harvard Lew School. Tushnet graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School and served as a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall. His research includes studies of constitutional review in the United States and around the world, and the creation of other "institutions for protecting constitutional democracy." He also writes in the area of legal and particularly constitutional history, with works on the development of civil rights law in the United States and a history of the Supreme Court in the 1930s.

Reviews

[Vicky · Rating 1 out of 5]

awful

[Daniel Kleven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thurgood Marshall; W. E. B. Du Bois; Derrick Bell; Brown vs. Board of Education

Originally published in 1987, a re-issue of this book came out in 2004 with a new Epilogue reflecting further on the book.

Fascinating deep dive into the figures, cases, and strategies of the NAACP legal team, from the start of their focus on legal challenges leading up to Brown v. Board. Drawn mainly from the NAACP papers, so told from their perspective. Fascinating the tension between aiming at achieving the "equal" in "separate but equal" versus a full on assault on the "separate" part. Particularly fascinating in light of W. E. B. Du Bois's complex views on this subject (see Du Bois, "Does the Negro Need Separate Schools?" Journal of Negro Education (1935) on JSTOR). This tension would result in Du Bois resigning from the NAACP, which you can read all about in the January through August 1934 issues of The Crisis (starting here)

Tushnet also interacts a little bit with Derrick Bell's later reconsideration of Brown (see Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform.

See also the somewhat critical review of Tushnet by Robert Carter in the Michigan Law Review:

https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/...

[Kristine · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.8 stars

read this for a class. while it was definitely very comprehensive and informative, the writing style was incredibly dull and a chore to get through. win some, lose some.

[Tanweer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative but dry