African-American Rights After Brown

The preceding chapters in this volume have focused on the U.S. Supreme Court and African-American rights in the years prior to the mid-twentieth century. That history shows the Court at its worst and at its best—as perpetuating racism and striving to overcome it. In this chapter, I will step back and ask if the Court’s attempts to overcome racism made much difference to the lives of African-Americans. In particular, I will focus on the Court’s 1954 decision, Brown v. Board of Education, ¹ which unanimously struck down race-based segregation in elementary and secondary schools as violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Brown is an apt case for focus on the Court’s contribution to change because it has received praise across the legal spectrum and is celebrated by scholars and social critics as a landmark. As the legal historian Michael Klarman puts it, “constitutional lawyers and historians generally deem Brown v. Board of Education to be the most important U.S. Supreme Court decision of the twentieth century, and possibly of all time.” ²