Martin, Jr., Brown V. Board Of Education - A Brief History With Documents

Abstract

This is a valuable companion to longer works on the history of the African American experience, especially the less commonly taught but extremely important history of the movement for civil rights in the United States-the struggle for equal access to educational opportunities. The "brief history" is brief enough (40 pages) and the array of documents reproduced here is wide enough to make this reviewer conclude that Martin has provided a text that students and teachers will consult, and that the general reader will like to keep.

The "brief history" of the Brown decision is presented as the "Introduction" to the book. This traces the history from the emergence of Jim Crow in the immediate post-emancipation era to the NAACP's successful legal battles against inequality and discrimination culminating in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954). Martin presents the history as a "legal struggle." It was a struggle that seemed to touch on all aspects of American life, including the legal profession itself. Among the decisions that "nibbled away at Plessy" (Plessy v. Ferguson [1896]) were Gaines v. Canada ( 193 8) and Sipuel v. Oklahoma State Regents (1948).