After Brown: The Rise and Retreat of School Desegregation and Boom for Whom? Education, Desegregation, and Development in Charlotte

Extract

After Brown: The Rise and Retreat of School Desegregation. By Charles T. Clotfelter. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 216p. $24.95.

Boom for Whom? Education, Desegregation, and Development in Charlotte. By Stephen Samuel Smith. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. 246p. $86.50 cloth, $29.95 paper.

Charles Clotfelter was moved to write his book because he discovered that his students at Duke had no real appreciation of the intense struggle to end racial isolation in public schools begun by the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. He felt some urgency in laying out the historical record since there were strong indications that contemporary schools were becoming resegregated. After Brown focuses on “interracial contact,” the physical proximity of the races in schools, because it is the necessary intermediary for all other potential benefits, including educational achievement, self-esteem, attitudes, and long-term social and economic success.