With All Deliberate Speed: Implementing Brown v. Board of Education

With All Deliberate Speed: Implementing Brown v. Board of Education * Edited by Brian J. Daugherity and Charles C. Bolton * Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2008 * xvi, 340 pp. * $64.95 cloth; $24.95 paper

There is no absence of literature on the epochal Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education. The fiftieth anniversary of the decision in 2004 in particular saw an explosion of books, journal articles, essays, conference panels, symposia, and lectures on the meaning and influence of the case. Many were laudatory of Brown v. Board as a vital moment in the history of the struggle against white supremacy in America. More than a few used the anniversary to investigate how far we had come, or not come. But remarkably little of the voluminous work on Brown has addressed the actual implementation of the court's desegregation decision.

With All Deliberate Speed aims to address this oversight. Bringing together thirteen authors who contributed twelve essays, editors Brian J. Daugherity and Charles C. Bolton have made...