|
|
|
Book Review
Canada and the United States
| Amilcar Shabazz. Advancing Democracy: African Americans and the Struggle for Access and Equity in Higher Education in Texas. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2004. Pp. xiii, 301. Cloth $49.95, paper $19.95.
|
| Amilcar Shabazz has written an authoritative civil rights history centered around the landmark Sweatt v. Painter case (1950) in which the United States Supreme Court ordered the University of Texas to desegregate its law school. This was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP) greatest school litigation triumph before the well-known Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision. |
1
|
|
The book begins in the 1930s when African Americans forced the Texas legislature to create a scholarship program to enable students to attend out-of-state schools in the absence of segregated, in-state opportunities. This was the apex of the older strategy of equalizing separate facilities through an uprising of "black professional men and women, educators, and entrepreneurs" who would become the foundation for the NAACP's legal battles of the 1940s and 1950s (p. 25). Shabazz then documents the individual stories that constituted this "Texas University Movement" (p. 6). After the Sweatt decision, desegregation began to spread throughout Texas junior colleges and universities. However, massive resistance in Texas politics between 1954 and 1957 temporarily halted the movement as the state took legal action against the NAACP in the midst of white supremacist riots. After 1957, desegregation resumed, largely due to increased federal involvement in civil rights and the rise of racial moderates in state politics. |
. . . |
There are about 527 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|