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INTEGRATION VS. SEGRECATION by Hubert H.- Ed. Humphrey

INTEGRATION VS. SEGRECATION

By

Pub Date: March 30th, 1964
Publisher: rowell

According to Senator Humphrey, the 10th anniversary in May of this year of the Supreme Court decision on Brown v. the Board of Education will see token desegration at the elementary and secondary level of every state in the union, but ""most of the victories, for most Negroes, have been moral victories"". Here is an ad hoc reckoning of the case for school integration vs. segregation, in terms of law and attitudes and sociological outlooks. The first section of the book following Senator Humphrey's introduction deals with the legal history, from the 14th Amendment, through Plessy v. Farguson, which established the ""separate but equal"" clause, to Brown v. The Board of Education which reversed the ruling, Cooper v. Aaron which upheld the latter, articles pro and con, and the ""Southern Manifesto"" issued by Southern members of Congress. There follow sections covering desegregation in the South, revealing the differences between Louisville and Birmingham, Norfolk and rural Mississippi; integration in the North and West, where the problem ""is less one of establishing desegregation than it is that of achieving meaningful integration""; the psychological aspects of desegregation for both adults and the children involved; racial differences and learning capacities--with studies on both sides of the fence; desegregation and private education--suggesting the stimulus to the upper middle class to lean to private schools, and to offset this, a final article on the freedom of choice and democratic values. A good coverage of the legal aspects is perhaps the book's strongest point of interest; further, this is a considered multi-view.