Structure

Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy,” by James T. Patterson is separated into ten chapters that tell the story of the fight for desegregation of public schools that spurred on an accelerated civil rights movement. He begins the narrative in the decades before Brown with the egregious conditions that black students had to withstand that came to the forefront. Patterson describes the five cases that made up Brown, their circuitous route to the Supreme Court, the aftermath of the decision, white resistance especially in the Deep South and the struggles to implement the difficult transition from segregated to desegregated schools.

There is an extensive appendix that contains the key cases referenced in the book. Another appendix contains tables and figures of student populations and other data from the 1940s going forward. Patterson also includes a “Notes” sections in which he...