Paterson, James T. Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and its Troubled Legacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Summary
This book examines the historic Brown v. Board decision and its contested legacy. Patterson re-tells the background story to Brown v. Board and then explores the questions and issues that still swirl around the case today. Patterson brings in a multitude of actors – from the plaintiffs to the political leaders to local community members – and examines how the decision was first received (mixed) and how its legacy reveals takes on notions of defeat, rather than victory. The decision, he argues, had very little impact in its first ten years; “only in the late 1960s, when the Civil Rights Act of 1964, court decisions like Jefferson, Green, and Alexander, and firm feral enforcement attacked evasion… did white Southerners begin to comply.” (221) Even with these changes, segregation still remained, especially de facto segregation in metro areas. Throughout the 1970s and the 1980s, as a more activist court went into decline and more court decisions dismantled previous cases, segregation in public education persisted, with the 1990s showing similar trends as pre-Brown. Yet, Patterson concludes that despite its contested legacy, the Brown decision still maintains symbolic power, for it re-consecrated American ideals.

See also: William Reese, America's Public Schools;