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The Sweatt v. Painter case gained Heman Sweatt a place in the University of Texas Law School; more important was the first victory for the LDF campaign against segregation, abandoning the earlier attempt to make separate but equal truly equal. It also pioneered the use of historical and sociological evidence that separate but equal could never be equal.

Chapter 7 analyzes two cases generally thought of as exemplary of the Supreme Court protecting or even progressively expanding civil rights protected under the Constitution. Brown and Obergefell are thought of by liberal theorists as examples of the Court getting things right. Of course they are also thought of as not grounded in the Constitution by conservative legal theorists. Brown famously overruled the “separate but equal” doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson. Obergefell found a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Interestingly, though the results are disputed by legal theorists, they are also thought by both sides of the debate to be examples of the Court properly understanding its role as supreme interpreter of the Constitution. This chapter challenges that interpretation. It presents Brown as an information-rich decision that exemplifies much that is required of democratic experimentalism. It presents Obergefell as arriving at the correct legal conclusion, but through a roundabout way that could have been better justified if the Court utilized the jurisprudence of democratic experimentalism. Posner’s opinion, Baskin v. Bogan is offered as a better option.

The final chapter contends with the cases’ complex and paradoxical legacies for America’s cities and the civil rights movement. The covenant cases returned from the Supreme Court chamber into the hands of the white and black communities who would determine its impact on the substance of American life. The ensuing struggle to define and control the meaning of the cases gave new contours to two contradictory forces in the postwar nation: the racial ghetto and the struggle for black freedom. The chapter examines how the depths of white resistance to the decision dramatically curtailed the potential impact of the NAACP’s victory on the entrenchment of urban segregation. The chapter then argues, however, for a new understanding of how the campaign against restrictive covenants transformed the legal battle against Jim Crow. The victory in Shelley v. Kraemer set legal activists on a collision course with “separate but equal” jurisprudence and equipped them with essential alliances and tactics to succeed in that fight.

This chapter examines the U.S. Supreme Court landmark case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and its influence on the form and content of the American novel. After providing a background on Plessy, which upheld de jure segregation in the United States until it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the chapter considers the legal argument of Albion Tourgée. It then analyzes a number of novels by authors such as Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and Edward P. Jones. In particular, it discusses the novel in order to elucidate the racial fictions and counterfactual imaginings embedded within the legal text of the doctrine of “equal but separate” established by Plessy.

The Civil War and its Constitutional Amendments notwithstanding, social integration was abhorrent to both northern and southern whites as late as the 1920s. The 1875 Civil Rights Act, passed by a Union Congress at the end of Reconstruction has been mischaracterized as an “integration” statute. Rather it was a “separate but equal” statute fully consistent with the mandate of Plessy v. Ferguson twenty years later. American Progressives developed a liberal social conscience about wealth distribution and the rights of labor, but these were combined with an aggressive “managed” racism that forced racial separation in education, housing, and sexual contact. These views were supported by social science, or “Brandeis briefs,” making the scientific case for state-mandated segregation. Only after anthropology and social science began to become more environmentalist in the 1930s did these scientific attitudes change.

This chapter traces the process of African American children in the tri-city area of Harlan County, Kentucky, becoming, like many others in the country, “children of integration” through the historic Brown v. Board of Education case. Both the inheritance and the risks of desegregation befell everyday black children; they would be the change agents for dismantling the “separate but equal” doctrine upheld by Plessy v. Ferguson. What was that experience like? By tracing the background of the Brown case and using oral history testimony, the chapter draws attention to the hidden injuries, loss of community, and transforming racial epistemologies that accompanied forced school desegregation. When asked to reflect on the perceived costs and benefits of desegregation, participant responses varied by generation and level of abstraction. While acknowledging the benefits, they all expressed some form of injury: a loss of community and African American identity.

The book opens with Almond’s development from boyhood through college, his marriage, and entry into the Army, which set the pattern for his life and military career. Life at the Virginia Military Institute, with its strong Confederate and military influences, shaped his outlook. Almond no doubt developed attitudes toward black people early on that would become apparent only decades later. Neither he nor his contemporaries would have considered their views racist. The Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Fergusson had enshrined the separate but equal doctrine in the nation’s social and legal framework guaranteed a separation of the races, and this was Almond’s reality. Almond had enjoyed success in high school and college, but his high achievement masked a sense of insecurity that would plague him for the rest of his life.

This chapter briefly details the post-1920 northern freedom struggle at the Jersey Shore. Despite continued efforts by grassroots black activists to press for integration, the black merchant class exploited the gradual decline of white entertainment spaces and the growing appeal of black consumer culture to lure in white customers and to downplay direct civil rights action. Rather than the typical “long march to freedom” promoted in many oft-told accounts, this chapter argues that the promise of consumption and the accompanying culture of growth spurred the region’s long retreat from earlier civil rights victories.

Chapter 5 examines how the moral and physical health of consumers and consumer districts became tied to economic rights, commercial expansion, and political stability. Intertwined in these debates were competing consumer and leisure discourses. Free consumer advocates advanced and protected the underground economy of leisure and advocates of consumer protection advanced a program of economic growth and environmental justice. Together, these campaigns helped contain campaigns for integrated leisure by solidifying the legal doctrine of “separate but equal.”

Reatha Clark King is a woman who began life in rural Georgia and rose to become a chemist, a college president, and vice president of a major corporate foundation. Reatha Belle Clark was born in Pavo, Georgia, on April 11, 1938, the second of three daughters born to Willie and Ola Watts Clark Campbell. Her mother Ola had a third grade education and her father Willie was illiterate. Her families were sharecroppers in Pavo. Her mother and grandmother raised her in Moultrie, Georgia, after her parents separated when she was young. She and her sisters worked long hours in the cotton and tobacco field during the summer to raise money. She could pick 200 pounds of cotton a day and earn $6.00, which was more than her mother’s salary as a maid. 1 In the 1940s in the rural segregated South, the only career aspirations for young black girls were to become a hairdresser, a teacher, or a nurse. Reatha started school at the age of four in the one-room schoolhouse at Mt. Zion Baptist Church. Still more than a decade before Brown v. Board of Education , Reatha’s schools were segregated. The teacher, Miss Florence Frazier, became Reatha’s first role model. Reatha said, “I never wondered if I could succeed in a subject. It was only a question of whether I wanted to study the subject.” She later attended the segregated Moutrie High School for Negro Youth. Despite missing much school to attend to fieldwork, Reatha maintained her studies. She graduated in 1954 as the valedictorian of her class. Reatha received a scholarship to enter Clark College in September 1954, originally planning to major in home economics and teach in her local high school. These plans changed after her first chemistry course with Alfred Spriggs, the chemistry professor. He encouraged her to major in chemistry and go to graduate school. She found that chemistry was the perfect major for her. She says, “Both the subject matter and methodology were interesting and challenging; the laboratory and lecture sessions were exciting; and my fellow students in chemistry were both serious students and fun to work with.”