A Girl Stands at the Door: The Generation of Young Women Who Desegregated America's Schools by Rachel Devlin (review)

A Girl Stands at the Door is a wonderfully written book which highlights the role of women and girls in school desegregation history from the post-World War II years until students desegregated in the 1960s. This history is long overdue, and Rachel Devlin does a masterful job of bringing these young women to the fore. Devlin convincingly argues that women's work was essential in bringing school desegregation cases, centralizing desegregation in postwar American political imagination, and helping make school desegregation possible. The national narrative about school desegregation has cemented the role of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), Thurgood Marshall, and male lawyers, judges, NAACP leaders, and plaintiffs. There is no doubt that their histories are important. However, girls and women played an equally important part as they were more likely to be plaintiffs, were highly active in local school desegregation movements, covered the news about desegregation, and organized and fundraised to make the cases happen. In many ways, the work of women, particularly as it relates to K-12 cases, caused Marshall and the LDF to go after elementary and secondary school cases before they were ready to do so. Local people forced the issue, and women often stood on the front lines of those struggles.

This history at times places women in heroic positions typically reserved for men. Devlin artfully tells stories about the women's backgrounds that showcased their explicit and implicit training to withstand the desegregation opponents. Black girls, particularly those from the middle class, were taught to behave well, maintain cleanliness, and remain graceful and poised. These lessons prepared girls to represent the race, as respectability politics were an important part of the struggle for civil rights and school desegregation. The hope was that they would appear nonthreatening and therefore more acceptable to white school administrators. Social grace did not preclude physical and psychological reprisals girls faced as plaintiffs and as the first to enter formerly all white schools. In some instances, they were more likely than boys to face physical violence.

The first three chapters of A Girl Stands at the Door chronicles the desegregation activities of Lucile Bluford, Ada Lois Sipuel, and Ester Brown. Four other chapters are dedicated to the combined efforts of women and girls who served as litigants in the 1940s, in the cases that made up Brown v. Board of Education, and who desegregated schools through the mid-1960s. The in depth exploration of these individual histories reveals what they endured in the fight for school desegregation. Women fundraised for desegregation cases, harassed the NAACP to get involved in local cases, and spoke publically. All the while, they suffered harassing phone calls, job loss for supporters, and other cruelties associated with their opposition to racial oppression.

In this history, women at times seemed to stand taller than men. Devlin often juxtaposes women plaintiffs against men whose cases are well known at similar times. For instance, Lucile Bluford, detailed in chapter one, had eleven failed attempts to desegregate the University of Missouri's School of Journalism. She was a willing litigant, but the NAACP focused on Lloyd Gaines' challenge to gain entry into the University of Missouri's law school. Gaines' case reached the Supreme Court, and he disappeared soon after. While foul play has long been suspected, Devlin provides evidence that he may have purposely disappeared to escape the limelight. Bluford was still actively involved in school desegregation as a journalist and editor of the Kansas City Call. She appeared fearless relative to Gaines. In another instance, Ada Sipuel's case, Sipuel v. Board of Regents (Oklahoma) reached the Supreme Court in 1948 prior to Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma, both decided in 1950. Thurgood Marshall preferred to focus on the Sweatt case over the Sipuel case because of his established relationships in Texas, the size of the NAACP...