The Hardest Deal of All

The Battle over School Integration in Mississippi, 1870-1980

Bibliographic Data

ID10025288
AuthorsJ Todd Moye (University of North Texas at Dallas, corresponding author)
Year2006
Volume93
Issue3
Pages949-950
Publication date2006-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of American History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/4486559
OpenAlexW2618941487
LanguageEN
Citations received6

In 1954 William Faulkner despaired over the state of Mississippi's public schools, worrying in a letter to a Memphis newspaper that dunderheaded elected officials in his impoverished home state seemed intent on creating “two identical systems neither of which is good enough for anybody” (p. 60). The Hardest Deal of All chronicles the tortured history of race and public education in Mississippi, “the last southern state to resist even token desegregation” of its schools (p. 120). The book's chronological sweep is one of its greatest strengths. Charles C. Bolton's analysis extends from Reconstruction-era efforts to create the public schools, through the construction of the segregated system and an “equalization” program that vexed Faulkner in the 1950s and 1960s, and beyond, to forced desegregation and the development of “unitary” public school systems in the immediate aftermath off the U.S. Supreme Court's 1969 Alexander v. Holmes decision. Bolton's narrative is complex and nuanced. It includes scores of black educators placed in impossible historical situations, the familiar cast of white-supremacist state politicians, the always-infuriating Sovereignty Commission, and the Orwellian “freedom of choice” plan, one of many initiatives that delayed desegregation for a generation after Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Bolton excels at describing the motivations of black Mississippians who, in the face of massive amounts of violence and intimidation, kept pushing for better educational opportunities, first by demanding more resources for somewhat autonomous “black” schools and later by insisting on equal access to “white” schools. Those who sought integration did so not in service of an abstract principle but to bring about a fairer distribution of resources for black and white schoolchildren. The motivations of whites who resisted integration are all too clear in Bolton's telling, too

Battle · Commission · Desegregation · Legislature · Memphis · Narrative · Narrative history · Newspaper · Political science · Sociology · State (computer science · State legislature · State supreme court · Supreme court · White (mutation · Diverse Education Studies and Reforms · History · Law · Public Administration · School Choice and Performance

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