Brown V Board Of Education Summary

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Defining Moments: Brown v. Board of Education reviewed the backstories to the five major cases involved in school desegregation. The book also contained biographies on important civil rights activists and people who were tied to these cases. The author covered topics from the end of slavery all the way to how the cases affect people in today’s culture. Diane Telgen wrote this book to show that we did the right thing in making racial segregation illegal and to show anyone who believes otherwise that they are very wrong. Kenneth Clark and his wife Maimie’s doll experiment in Clarendon County, South Carolina changed the way the public saw segregated schools. This experiment showed how African American children saw themselves compared to white children and it was not a pretty sight. …show more content…
But instead of offering a strict plan for either gradual or immediate desegregation, he said that the states should make sure schools integrate with “all deliberate speed.” This, of course, did not happen in the whole country. Before this decision was made, several districts had already begun desegregating. On the other end of the spectrum, many schools took much longer than ninety days to integrate. Telgen offers statistics and specific details about the desegregation process. For example Louisville, Kentucky integrated 12,000 black students in all grades in only one semester in 1956. Elementary students seemed to be more accepting of integration than middle and high schoolers. Some counties were even able to integrate their schools without any problems. Milford, Delaware schools closed because rumors circulated that a black boy and a white girl were going to a dance together. Telgen showed that reactions to integration varied widely across the country. She provided details and many different cases to show responses of parents, students, and the