Brown V.

Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement by Michael Klarman

Klarman addressed the many factors that were conducive to racial change before the Brown decision

was made. The second world war was a defining moment in the history of race relations in the United

States. Black veterans who were returning to society were at the forefront of the civil rights movement.

Millions of white Americans' racial perspectives were significantly impacted the ideological

repercussions of the struggle against fascism, combined with the accompanying Cold War demand for

racial reform. Blacks in the North started to have a significant impact on national racial policy as large

numbers of black people moved there to take advantage of new economic opportunities.

Klarman had to go into the darkest corners of the past to illustrate the relationship between Brown and

the civil rights movement. He examined how the brutal and entrenched Jim Crow policies made it

difficult to implement internal change. Without external pressure, it is nearly impossible to change such

a system. The external pressure came from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored

People, as well as from public opinion and federal government intervention. This made it possible for

black people in the South to protest racial injustice in a setting where they felt secure. Ultimately,

important civil rights laws in the 1960s offered coercive measures that hastened the fall of  Jim Crow.