Jim Crow Moves North: The Battle over Northern School Segregation, 1865–1954 (review)

Douglas' discouraging account of the long battle for school desegregation in the North and Midwest officially covers the years between the end of the Civil War and Brown vs. Board of Education. But it begins earlier in the nineteenth century, when segregation was essentially universal, if blacks were allowed into tax-supported schools at all. Indeed, the key court-case dates from 1850, when the supreme court of relatively enlightened Massachusetts supported "separate but equal" facilities. The account ends with the reminder that between the naacp's "landmark" Brown victory and the present day, proportionately more black children have gone to all black schools in the bigger northern states than in the South. An alternative book title might well have been Jim Crow Stays North.

Thoughtful, well-organized, if somewhat repetitive, this history will fuel the ongoing debate about the relative importance of law, politics, and culture in effecting social change of any kind. Although written as part of the Cambridge Historical Studies in American Law and Society, taking full advantage of Douglas' legal expertise, it argues, with a host of specific examples, state by state and even town by town, that the law was a basically ineffective weapon in the face of white opposition.

A burst of legislation after the Civil War outlawed school segregation in all northern states except Indiana. But despite some victories in the higher courts, local districts were generally able to evade these statutes. Plaintiffs were hard to find, due to black poverty, lack of lawyers, and cost. Furthermore, the usual remedy, other than trivial fines, was mandamus—class action was not available until late in the twentieth century—which was held to admit only the child or siblings specifically named, often years after the suit. Finally, postwar Republican idealism, and competition for votes, dried up by the 1890s, inaugurating one-party rule until the 1930s.

The "Great Migration" of the early twentieth century further wounded the cause. Racism was always strongest in areas with big black populations. In places like New Jersey, African Americans were generally unaware of the ancient statewide law banning segregation; those few districts forced to open, say, high schools continued to provide separate elementary schools, or classrooms, or rows within classrooms, or to deny swimming pools or athletic facilities. A second wave of pro-integration sentiment, in the 1940s, inspired by World War II, increasing black votes, and the Cold War, used the more effective tactic of denying state funds to defiant districts, ushering in the familiar post-Brown condition: Without legal support, residential segregation could do the job.

Douglas' contribution, in addition to his careful case-by-case analysis, is to add black ambivalence, even resistance, to the list of reasons that undermined the drive to integrate. This difficulty was not just a matter of North vs. South, elites vs. masses, W. E. B. DuBois vs. Marcus Garvey, or Thurgood Marshall vs. Malcolm X. Segregated schools were always dismal, but their loss imperiled jobs for the leading professional group; as late as 1910, half of all black college graduates were teachers. Although segregated schools were never close to "equal," integration exposed children to harassment from white teachers as well as peers. Douglas cites (but unfortunately does not evaluate, since educational achievement is not his subject), studies in Washington, St. Louis, and Cincinnati that showed better results in segregated systems, to match the more familiar ones with opposite conclusions. DuBois famously changed his mind back in 1934; since the Brown case, the naacp itself has often favored pragmatism over principle. The author believes that only changes in hearts, minds, and politics will bring true integration, but his history shows no clear path to this end.