constitutional law

Michael J. Klarman's book From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality is the best book written about civil rights in America in quite some time. Klarman's book is one of the few works about the civil rights movement that analyzes the significant change that occurred in racial attitudes during 1900-1954 as well as the movement itself.

Klarman's book is a revisionist account that downplays the importance of the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education case. Klarman contends that there would have been a civil rights movement even if the Supreme Court had ruled the other way in Brown. Klarman believes that the conventional history gives court rulings too much credit for effecting change in America. Essentially, Klarman believes that the federal court system is actually very weak and does not affect America much in the long run.

Klarman believes, for instance, that the White Court's civil rights rulings during the Progressive Era did nothing to help blacks. Other than the Smith case of 1944, Klarman does not believe that Supreme Court rulings helped black Americans. In the Smith case, Klarman holds that it effectively opened the door for some black participation in Southern politics.

A large part of Klarman's book is devoted to debunking the idea that the Brown ruling helped speed the civil rights movement. Klarman holds that the Brown decision did little to inspire blacks to seek redress for racial grievances. He does, however, concede that the media coverage of Brown did help raise consciousness among white folks about racial injustice in the South.

Klarman's book is a revisionist account of civil rights history. It is well-written, makes its points well and is backed up by prodigious research. It deserves a wide audience.

From the Publisher: "From Jim Crow to Civil Rights" is a bold, carefully crafted, deeply researched, forcefully argued, lucidly written history of law and legal-change strategies in the civil rights movement from the 1880s to the 1960s, and a brilliant case study in the power and limits of law as it presents a challenging argument that places the Supreme Court's civil rights decisions in their social and political motor of social change. Among the hundreds of recent books on the history of civil rights and race relations, Klarman's is one of the most original, provocative, and illuminating, with fresh evidence and fresh insights on practically every page." --Robert W. Gordon, Yale University

"Pulling together a decade of truly magnificent scholarship, this extraordinary book bids fair to be the definitive legal history of perhaps the most important legal issue of the twentieth century. This is legal history at its best, and on a panoramic canvas."