SIMPLE JUSTICE
A massive legal history of the cases that led to Brown v. Board of Education and the struggle that followed.
Work Information
The legal core of the civil rights struggle is rendered through vast documentation.
A massive legal history of the cases that led to Brown v. Board of Education and the struggle that followed. Personal experience and historical fact open outward into a wider social frame.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Knopf
- Published
- 1975-12-12
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 2.54 x 2.54 x 2.54 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780394472898
- ISBN-10
- 0394472896
- Price
- 25163 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Politics & Social Sciences/Politics & Government/Specific Topics/Civil Rights & Liberties
No decision by the Supreme Court of the United States has had a more profound effect on the conscience of the American people than its ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, on May 17, 1954. Stunning in its unanimity and moral clarity, the ruling transformed race relations in the United States by holding that the legally enforced separation of its black and white children in schools–and, by extension, of the races in all other public settings–was no longer tolerable. The Court’s opinion climaxed a twenty-year struggle by a band of courageous African American plaintiffs and their resolute attorneys who labeled segregation for what it was, a caste system that betrayed U.S. ideals of human equality. Within months of the Justices’ verdict, the civil-rights movement was under way. Simple Justice, rich in personal drama and deft in connecting the complex social issues at stake, is the definitive account of the legal battle that after three centuries at last awarded black Americans equal protection under the law by finding the old “separate but equal” doctrine to be a contradiction. The forced separation of black schoolchildren solely because of their race, the nation’s highest court declared, “generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.” Pulitzer Prize—winner Richard Kluger explores the epochal Brown ruling from its legal and cultural roots, dwelling as well on the lives of those who led the long, bitter, and often disillusioning fight. Here is a sweeping narrative that treats the law not as some lofty abstraction but as an imperfect, and at times vexing, daily presence in a racially divided nation. We meet the men, women, and youngsters who overcame their fears and disadvantages to defy the mean spirit of Jim Crow. They were inspired by a remarkable group of black lawyers who practically invented civil-rights law by patiently assembling, in the courtroom and in the face of constant intimidation, a case so compelling that in the end it could not be denied. Kluger brilliantly searches out and reveals how the Brown decision was shaped–behind closed doors–by the clash of principles and personalities within the Supreme Court over the three years the Justices considered the monumental case. The outcome reflected, above all, the unflinching will of Chief Justice Earl Warren, new to the Court but old in the ways of politics, who unified his robed brethren behind a simple but immensely powerful message to the nation. For this revised edition of Simple Justice, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Court’s ruling, the author has added a final chapter that weighs the far-reaching impact of the case on American society over the past half century and finds that while true racial harmony and equality continue to elude the United States, there is more reason for hopeful celebration than dark despair. This is a vitally important work of American history.
Richard Kluger worked as a journalist with the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and the New York Herald Tribune (he was its last literary editor) before entering book publishing. After serving as executive editor at Simon & Schuster and as editor in chief at Atheneum, he turned to writing fiction and social history. He is the author of six novels (and two others with his wife, Phyllis), two National Book Award finalists– Simple Justice and The Paper (a history of the Herald Tribune )–and a Pulitzer Prize—winning history of the American cigarette business, Ashes to Ashes . He lives with his wife in Berkeley, California.
Reviews
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If you're looking to read just a select few of books abt the civil rights movement that will give you a more complete picture over what the three branches of government (the Presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court) did to first thwart and then support civil rights, this would be the book to read about the Supreme Court. But it's not only a great book about the evolution of American civil rights law from the 19th century to Brown vs. Board, but also a highly informative read about the key characters within the NAACP and the Supreme Court who were a part of this fight. On the right and wrong side of history.
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I'm a fan of nonfiction works and this easily moved to my top 5 favorite books. When I was growing up there were no courses on the contributions blacks made to America. There was no black history month. And I was cheated. I'm a 50+ white woman who lived through desegregation and had no clue that it was a struggle. I honestly don't remember a time when my elementary classes were all white but they must have been. I do remember clearly when my elementary class stopped being all white. That was when Richard Harris became my Batman buddy. On the aftenoons following the show we would go to the neighborhood soda shop and have a coke and discuss all the action of the previous evening's show and check for new Batman bubble gum cards with the intensity that only 5th graders can bring to such an important endeavor. It felt normal to chat Batman with Richard; and I'm so sorry for all the children that had such a dumb practice as segregation rob them of those moments. This book read like a thiriller for me. Couldn't put it down. Underlined and highlighted parts. Read other sections out loud to my husband and to some friends at work. This is American history. Everyone should have the opportunity to learn about the value of education, the value of varied experiences and the perseverance to acquire the rights that should never have been denied to the black people. It's made me hungry to know more and I'll be keeping my eye out for other works by Kluger. Excellent author.
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Excellent and comprehensive account of the history of racial discrimination in the US, which covers both North and South, before and after the Civil War. The author's biases are clearly stated and don't interfere with his presentation of facts and interpretation of the history. He has done a creditable job of being fair to points of view with which he disagrees, allowing the reader to draw his own conclusions. While I disagree with Kluger 's anti-capitalist and pro-interventionist viewpoints, at no time does he allow those views to color the history he presents. His own views remain interjections to the narrative flow, which is highly readable and compelling.
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Kluger’s book is a comprehensive compilation of the historical court case Brown V Board of Education and the Supreme Court decision that outlawed segregation. The author also covers the history of slavery in the United States and life after the Civil War for the black people. He describes the injustice, degradation and abuse to the black people. Kluger also covers the twenty years it took for states to fully respond to the Court’s directives to desegregate schools. The author also reviews, in great detail, the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. Kluger shows how the law has served to create and alter who we are as a society. The book is well written and meticulously researched. It is a lengthy book at 822 pages. It is a detailed history of the treatment of blacks in this country. The author reminds us that freedom without resources is simply a different form of slavery. Kluger introduces the reader to pivotal black attorneys such as Thurgood Marshall, Charles Houston and William Hastie. This is a must-read book. I am left with the thought that Kluger’s book presents America’s own version of a living holocaust. I read this as an e-book on my Kindle app for my iPad. The recent release of the book in digital form was 2011. It was originally published on December 12, 1975.
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This book is far more comprehensive than I could have ever anticipated. I tend to be wary of history books that are written so closely to the period, or the event, that they're discussing, since typically enough time hasn't passed to truly gain a full scope for the precedence that the events being discussed set, and the consequences of those events need more time to sink in. And it's especially difficult if the author actually lived through to see those events unfold, since being in the middle of a situation can typically obscure a clear view of it, but that skepticism was gone when Richard Kluger opened his book by detailing the legal state of racial identity in America immediately after the abolition of slavery. The subtitle of the book is somewhat misleading, "The History of Brown V. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality," which lead me to believe that Simple Justice would primarily be about the actual court case itself, but instead, more accurately, this book is less about Brown v Board itself, but more about the full scope of the African American struggle to attain equal access to education, the ridicule, shame, and injustice they endured for simple right to an education, and the hundreds of uphill battles blacks in America faced, along with the prejudice the court rooms held against them by demerit of their skin, all of which culminated over one hundred years until they finally secured a resounding victory in the decision of Brown v Board. It's a truly inspiring book in which Kluger paints so many silhouettes, and finds so many heroes on his journey through this particular vein of history.