Article
Cowan, Whiteness, Resistance to Brown, and the Persistence of the Past
Peabody Journal of Education
(2017)
Abstract
In this paper, I examine the use of litigation as a strategic tool of resistance for thwarting school desegregation. Utilizing Cowan v. Bolivar County Board of Education as a case study, I argue that, despite losing the constitutional right to racially segregate public schools according to an explicit white supremacist doctrine, whites in Bolivar County, Mississippi, were successful in stemming the impending tide of social change associated with school desegregation through litigation. Litigious resistance not only provided southern whites with a racially moderate epistemology for undermining school desegregation regionally, but their legal challenges to school desegregation also laid the groundwork for non-southern white animus toward all federal education policies that promoted racial inclusion.
Disciplines
Publication Date
December, 2017
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/0161956X.2017.1403172
Citation Information
Jamel K. Donnor. "Cowan, Whiteness, Resistance to Brown, and the Persistence of the Past" Peabody Journal of Education Vol. 93 Iss. 1 (2017) p. 23 - 37 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/jamel-donnor/39/