Synopses & Reviews
Most observers have assumed that school segregation in the United States was exclusively a southern phenomenon. In fact, many northern communities, until recently, engaged in explicit "southern style" school segregation whereby black children were assigned to "colored" schools and white children to white schools. Davison Douglas examines why so many northern communities did engage in school segregation (in violation of state laws that prohibited such segregation) and how northern blacks challenged this illegal activity. He analyzes the competing visions of black empowerment in the northern black community as reflected in the debate over school integration.
Review
"...This is a valuable contribution as a historical study, as a commentary on contemporary questions about the best means of providing quality education to all children, and as an addition to a growing literature that is reassessing the impact of desegregation for African American children."
-Choice"Eminently readable and thoughtfully constructed, Jim Crow Moves North is a welcome addition to the literature."
-TCRecord
About the Author
Davison M. Douglas is the Arthur B. Hanson Professor of Law at the William and Mary School of Law where he teaches courses in American constitutional law and history. From 1997-2004, he served as Director of the Institute of Bill of Rights Law at William and Mary. Douglas received a Ph.D. in American history (1992), a law degree (1983), and master's degree in religion (1983) from Yale University. He has written several articles and books dealing with American constitutional history, including Reading, Writing, and Race: The Desegregation of the Charlotte Schools (University of North Carolina Press, 1995), Redefining Equality (Oxford University Press, 1998) (edited, with Neal Devins), and articles in the Michigan Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, the Texas Law Review, and the UCLA Law Review. He has lectured on American constitutional law and history at universities throughout the United States, Africa, Asia, Australia, and Europe.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction; 2. The struggle for black education in the antebellum north; 3. Legislative reform: banning school segregation, 1865-1890; 4. The spread of northern school segregation, 1890-1940; 5. Responding to the spread of northern school segregation: conflict within the black community, 1900-1940; 6. The democratic imperative: the campaign against northern school segregation, 1940-1954; 7. Conclusion.