Civil Rights in Virginia part two features the courts and the Virginians contributing to the civil rights litigation. We begin with an overview, “Making Civil Rights Law” describing the centrality of the NAACPs Legal Defense Fund. “From Jim Crow to Civil Rights” traces Supreme Court Cases from 1900 to 1954 on racial matters that set the stage for Brown v. Board of Education.
The personalities of both advocates and jurists are revealed in “Simple Justice” and “We Face the Dawn” focuses on two LDF Richmond natives, Oliver Hill and Spottswood Robinson. “The Brown Decision” stresses the importance of the case in bringing about African American belonging and identity as Southerners.
For more book reviews at TheVirginiaHistorian.com in this historical era addressing other topics, see the webpage for Gilded Age, New South, Civil Rights, New Dominion (1889-present). General surveys of Virginia History can be found at Virginia History Surveys. Other Virginia history divided by topics and time periods can be found at the webpage Books and Reviews.
These titles are all used in bibliographies found in surveys of Virginia history of scholarly merit that are currently used in Virginia university history departments. Additional insights are used from articles in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of American History.
Making Civil Rights Law
Mark V. Tushnet wrote Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1936-1961 in 1994. It is now available online in paperback. Tushnet writes a history of legal strategies, ideas and arguments. He offers important insights into the dynamics of deliberation and the personal politics of the court. The case law involves challenges to race-based restrictive housing covenants, voting rights violations and educational segregation, beginning with applicants to graduates schools in 1936.
Charles Huston, a visionary law professor at Howard University and the first black member of the Harvard Law Review, founded the NAACPs Legal Defense Fund in the late 1920s. Thurgood Marshall took over in 1936 and continued to serve for twenty-five years. The key insight of the LDF strategy was that segregation as practiced under the Supreme Court’s Separate But Equal doctrine violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
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From Jim Crow to Civil Rights
Michael J. Klarman wrote From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality in 2004. It is now available as an eTextbook and online new in paperback. This legal history traces Supreme Court cases related to racial discrimination from Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 to Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. The dramatic shift in racial attitudes from 1900 to 1950 sets the stage for the ruling against public school segregation. Extra legal forces including public opinion determines equitable procedure and ultimately enforcement of the law.
Klarman can be critical of lawyers participating in social movements, believing members of the NAACP to be too focused on the black middle class condition, and that national and state legislation are key to accomplishing what jurisprudence alone cannot.
Learn more to buy “Jim Crow to Civil Rights” on Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
Simple Justice
Richard Kluger wrote Simple Justice: the History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Racial Equality in 1976. It is now available on Kindle and online in paperback. This history of the Brown Decision weaves a complex tapestry of anecdotes, vignettes and personal sketches to reveal the personal dimension of this struggle for equal access to education.
Kluger also makes an analysis of the Brown rulings and the legal and historical issues involved in the cases that brought about the overturning of the 1896 Plessy v. Fergusson “separate but equal” ruling.
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*Robert A. Pratt wrote The Color of Their Skin: Education and Race in Richmond, Virginia, 1954–89 in 1992. It is out of print but available online new and used. Learn more to buy “Color of Their Skin” on Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
We Face the Dawn
Margaret Edds wrote We Face the Dawn: Oliver Hill, Spottswood Robinson, and the Legal Team that Dismantled Jim Crow in 2018. It is now available from the University of Virginia Press and online on Kindle and new and used. The Civil Rights Movement in Virginia began not in the 1960s, but in the 1940s and 1950s, built on foundations laid by Richmond natives Oliver Hill and Spottswood Robinson. They were a part of a legal team led by the social justice pioneer Thurgood Marshall attacking segregation in education, transportation, housing and voting.
When students at the all-black R. R. Moton High School walked out in protest of the poor conditions, Hill and Robinson sued the Prince Edward County School Board. This grassroots effort was incorporated in the NAACP suit which became Brown v. Board of Education. When the Virginia General Assembly sought to disbar Hill and Robinson they successfully defended their legal practice on appeal to the Supreme Court.
Learn more to buy “We Face the Dawn” on Amazon.com for your bookshelf.
The Brown Decision
James C. Cobb wrote The Brown Decision, Jim Crow and Southern Identity in 2005. It is now available at the University of Georgia Press, on Kindle and online new and used. Cobb argues against the counterfactual thesis that the Jim Crow South was on its way to racial accommodation. Racial oppression and economic development were mutually reinforcing. The Smith v. Allwight case overturning the white primary prefigured the white Southern reaction including threats of violence; it was not the Brown decision that initially coalesced racist resistance to integration by the Supreme Court.
Brown v. Board was important to African American identity because it was about belonging, and importantly, belonging to the South. By the turn of the 21st century, more blacks in the South identified as Southerners than whites in the South. There was ironically also a loss of black community which had been imposed by the segregated system. But Brown made possible and legitimized much of subsequent black protest for racial equality.
Learn more to buy “The Brown Decision” on Amazon.com for your bookshelf.