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Michael J. Klarman Source: the Journal of American History, Vol How Brown Changed Race Relations: The Backlash Thesis Author(s): Michael J. Klarman Source: The Journal of American History, Vol. 81, No. 1 (Jun., 1994), pp. 81-118 Published by: Organization of American Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2080994 Accessed: 09-08-2015 20:11 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Organization of American Historians is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of American History. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 64.9.56.53 on Sun, 09 Aug 2015 20:11:59 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions How BrownChanged Race Relations: The BacklashThesis MichaelJ. Klarman Constitutionallawyers and historians generally deem Brown v. Board ofEducation to be themost important United States Supreme Court decision of the twentieth century,and possiblyof all time.Surprisingly little attention, however, has been devotedto analyzing precisely how Brown was important. Yet Supreme Court deci- sionscan be significantinmany different ways. First, as a directcause, Brown could havedesegregated the public schools. Alternatively, oradditionally, Brown might havehad indirecteffects - thrusting the desegregationissue onto the national agenda,searing the conscience of previously indifferent northern whites, providing legitimacyto desegregationdemands by blacks, or inspiring (especially southern) blacksto challengethe racial status quo.1 Thisarticle has two objectives. First, I wish to raise questions about the usual ac- countsof how Brown mattered. It is widelyacknowledged that Brown's direct im- pacton school desegregation was limited. Yet Brown's indirect contribution toracial changecontinues to be moregenerally assumed than demonstrated. I wish to sug- gestthat scholars may have exaggerated the extent to whichthe Supreme Court's schooldesegregation ruling provided critical inspiration tothe civil rights movement. MichaelJ. Klarmanis professorof law and Class of 1966 ResearchProfessor, University of Virginia. I havebenefited in differentways during the gestation of this project from the inputof Barry Adler, Ed Ayers, Alan Brinkley,Dan Carter,Lance Conn, BarryCushman, Matt Dillard, John Hart Ely, Jon Entin, David Garrow, Paul Gaston,Sam Issacharoff,John Jeffries, Walter Kamiat, Pam Karlan,Herbert Klarman, Hal Krent,Chuck McCurdy,Neil McMillen,Dan Ortiz,Gerald Rosenberg, Jim Ryan, Reuel Schiller,Bruce Schulman, Bill Stuntz, David Thelen,J. MillsThornton III, MarkTushnet, and Ted White,as well as participantsin facultyworkshops at Case WesternUniversity School of Law and at theUniversity of Virginia Department of History and twoanony- mousreaders for theJournalofAmerican History. Superb research assistance was provided by WijdanJreisat, Reuel Schiller,Leslie Shaunty, and Joel Straka.I would also liketo thankSusan Armenyfor her excellent copyediting and KentOlson forreference assistance above and beyondthe call ofduty. Finally, it wouldnot have been possible forme to haveread as widelyas I havefor this project without the cheerfuland efficientdictation transcription of KathyBurton, Evelyn Gray, Christine Moll, Susan Simches,and (especially)Phyllis Ware. 1 Brownv. Board ofEducation of Topeka,347 U.S. 483 (1954). Forstatements of Brown's overarching impor- tance,seeJ. Harvie Wilkinson, From Brown to Bakke:The Supreme Court and SchoolIntegration,1954-1978 (New York,1979), 6; MaryL. Dudziak,"Desegregation as a Cold WarImperative," StanfordLaw Review, 41 (Nov. 1988), 62; Lino Graglia,"Remarks at RoundtableDiscussion of theJudiciary Act of 1789,"Nova Law Review,14 (Fall 1989),271; Robert L. Gill, "The Impact,Implications, and Prospectsof Brown v. Board of Education: Twenty-Five YearsAfter," Negro Educational Review, 30 (April-July1979), 64; HowardA. Glickstein,"The Impactof Brown v. Boardof Education and Its Progeny,"Howard Law Journal, 23 (no. 1, 1980),55; and NathanielR. Jones,"The Desegregationof Urban Schools Thirty Years after Brown," University of ColoradoLaw Review,55 (Summer1984), 553. The Journalof AmericanHistory June 1994 81 This content downloaded from 64.9.56.53 on Sun, 09 Aug 2015 20:11:59 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 82 TheJournal of American History June1994 The second,and morefundamental, objective of this article is to providean alter- nativeaccount of Brown'sindirect contribution to racialchange, one thatfocuses on the backlashagainst Brown. In thisview, Brown was indirectlyresponsible for thetransformative civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s by setting in motionthe followingpattern of events.2 Brown crystallized southern resistance to racialchange, which-from at leastthe time of Harry S. Truman'scivil rights proposals in 1948- had been scatteredand episodic.The unificationof southernracial intransigence, whichbecame knownas massiveresistance, propelled politics in virtuallyevery southernstate several notches to the righton racialissues; Brown temporarily de- stroyedsouthern racial moderation. In thisextremist political environment, men who wereunswervingly committed to preservationof the racialstatus quo were catapultedinto public office.These massiveresistance politicians were both per- sonallyand politicallypredisposed to use whatevermeasures were necessary to main- tainJim Crow,including the brutalsuppression of civil rightsdemonstrations. There followednationally televised scenes of southernlaw enforcementofficers usingpolice dogs, high-pressure fire hoses, tear gas, and truncheonsagainst peace- ful,prayerful black demonstrators (often children), which converted millions of pre- viouslyindifferent northern whites into enthusiastic proponents of civil rights legis- lation. It is crucialto emphasizethe limited claim to originalitythat I am makingin pro- posingthe backlash thesis. Many historians and politicalscientists -for example, Earl Black,Numan V. Bartley,Hugh D. Graham,and Neil R. McMillen-have copiously documentedthe racialfanaticism that Brown induced in southernpolitics. Other scholars-for example, DavidJ. Garrow, Harvard Sitkoff, and Doug McAdam-have convincinglydemonstrated the connectionbetween suppression of civil rights demonstrationsat Birminghamand Selma, Alabama, and the enactmentof the CivilRights Act of 1964and theVoting Rights Act of 1965.Thus, I claimno origi- nalityin establishingthe particular links in theproferred chain of causation. To my knowledge,however, nobody has assembledthese links into a causalchain that con- 2 Anyevaluation of the extent to whichthe civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s altered the racial landscape ofthis nation is controversial.Plainly the Civil Rights Act of 1964had a dramaticeffect on southernschool segrega- tion;the Voting Rights Act of 1965had similarlyrevolutionary implications for black voter registration, especially in theDeep South.For example, the percentage of eligible blacks registered to votein Mississippiincreased from 6.7% in 1964to 32.9% in 1966and to 59.4% in 1968,while the corresponding figures for Alabama were 23.0%, 51.2%,and 56.7%. Thesefigures are uncontroverted; what is controversialis evaluating how much difference school desegregationand voterregistration have made to thelives of blacks. Heightened black voter registration has failed to produceblack elected officials in proportionto the blackpercentage of the population(though the numbers continueto increaseannually), and evenblack elected officials have failed significantly to mitigate the enormous economicand socialproblems facing the nation's black community. The statisticson blackvoting are from David J. Garrow,Protest at Selma.:Martin Luther King, Jr., and the VotingRights Act of 1965 (New Haven, 1978), 19, table 1-3,189, table 6-1.Statistics on blackelected officials are in StevenF Lawson,Running for Freedom: Civil Rightsand BlackPolitics in Americasince 1941(Philadelphia, 1991), 260, table 5, 261. On the limitedcapacity of blackvoting to remedythe ills of the blackcommunity, see Garrow,Protest at Se/ma,190-91, 210-11; Lawson, Runningfor Freedom, 261-64; Andrew Hacker, Two Nations: Black and White,Separate, Hostile, Unequal (New York,1992); RobertJ. Norrell, Reaping the Whirlwind.The CivilRights Movement in Tuskegee(New York,1985), 206-8; HarvardSitkoff, The Strugglefor Black Equality, 11954-1980 (New York,1981), 230-34; and Numan V. Bartley,The Creationof Modern Ga. (Athens,Ga., 1983), 203-4. This content downloaded from 64.9.56.53 on Sun, 09 Aug 2015 20:11:59 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions How the BrownDecision ChangedRace Relations 83 Whitestudents protest the Brown decision, which destroyed racial liberalism amongsouthern whites and fomentedmassive resistance. CourtesyBirmingham News. nectsBrown, in an indirectand indeedalmost perverse manner, with the landmark civilrights legislation of the mid-1960s.Finally, whether the Browndecision was a profoundor a minorinspiration for the civil rights movement, the backlash thesis has explanatorypower, since the criticalfederal legislative intervention occurred onlyafter the civil rightsmovement intersected, at places like Birminghamand Selma,
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