Detroit Book

James Patterson adds an excellent addition to the Pivotal moments in American history series with Brown v. Board of Education. This book explores the results of Brown and how it shaped civil rights in the post Brown era. While of course focusing primarily on schools, Patterson also takes a look at how Brown emboldened groups like the NAACP, caused the rise of the more militant civil rights group by the failure to implement Brown and shows how Brown changed the views of those who went through it. The book does not just end with Brown II but goes on to look at the busing cases and the efforts of several legislatures to implement plans to uphold school desegregation. It examines the tactics of extremist white southerners to keep schools segregated and posits some interesting ideas about how Brown changed urbanization and may (at least in the south) have encouraged a second wave of white migration to the suburbs. Overall though it is a thorough analysis of the post actions that the Brown decision derived.

My one complaint about this book and the reason for the four stars is that it says very little about the actual arguments of the case. While providing a background of the key players in the case there is little information about the oral and written arguments presented to the Supreme Court. That being said given that the series tries to give the most amount of information in the shortest number of pages possible I would bump it to 4.5 stars.