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Boston University School of Law

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Brown v. Board of Education

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Reconceptualizing The Harms Of Discrimination: How Brown V. Board Of Education Helped To Further White Supremacy, Angela Onwuachi-Willig Apr 2019

Reconceptualizing The Harms Of Discrimination: How Brown V. Board Of Education Helped To Further White Supremacy, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

For decades, literature has played a vital role in revealing weaknesses in law. The classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is no different. The long-revered work of fiction contains several key scenes that illuminate significant gaps in the analysis of one of our most celebrated decisions: Brown v. Board of Education, the case in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that state-mandated racial segregation in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. In particular, the novel opens a pathway that enables its readers to visualize the full harms of white supremacy, which include …


Rewriting Brown, Resurrecting Plessy, James E. Fleming Jul 2008

Rewriting Brown, Resurrecting Plessy, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

It is an honor and a pleasure to ponder Cooper v. AaronI and the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education2 in general and to respond to David A. Strauss's wise and insightful Childress Lecture3 in particular. I want to address three topics. The first two are encapsulated in my title: Rewriting Brown, Resurrecting Plessy. I'll examine the widespread phenomenon of "rewriting Brown." And I'll document what I shall call "resurrecting Plessy": the phenomenon, evident in both liberal and conservative scholarship and opinions, of charging one's opponents with repeating the mistakes of Plessy v. Ferguson.4 I'll illustrate the liberal version …


For Whom Does The Bell Toll: The Bell Tolls For Brown?, Angela Onwuachi-Willig May 2005

For Whom Does The Bell Toll: The Bell Tolls For Brown?, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

This review essay analyzes Derrick Bell's provocative new book, Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform (2004). In Silent Covenants, Professor Bell reviews Brown v. Board of Education, and inquires "whether another approach than the one embraced by the Brown decision might have been more effective and less disruptive in the always-contentious racial arena." Specifically, Professor Bell joins black conservatives in critiquing what he describes as a misguided focus on achieving racial balance in schools and argues that the quality of education for minority children, in particular Blacks, would have been better today …