Jim Crow Moves North: The Battle over Northern School Segregation, 1865-1954 by Davison M. Douglas

Abstract

Book Reviews 143 moderation overcome what David Broder called its capacity to inform but fa?ure to inspire or inflame. Dempsey has given us a fine example of moderation within Republican Party politics. William and Helen Milliken emerge from the pages of this book as exceptional citizens committed to the public good. The testimonies from their close associates underscore the personal convictions and decency of this couple. Dempsey yearns for a return to the spirit of those days. His book challenges readers to gain a better understanding of moderation as a political strategy?a strategy in need of clearly articulated ph?osophical assumptions and principles and of specifically defined mechanisms and approaches. Francis X. Blouin, Jr. Bendey Historical Library Davison M. Douglas. Jim CrowMoves North: The Battle over Northern School Segregation, 1865-1954. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. 334. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Paper, $24.99. Davison M. Douglas's Jim CrowMoves North: The Battle over Northern School Segregation, 1865-1954 is a rare book whose tide promises significandy less than the book actually offers. Douglas begins well before 1865, with an informative fifty-page overview of black education in the antebellum North. His definition of the "North" is generous enough to capture pretty much everywhere outside the Confederacy (with primary emphasis on the Northeast andMidwest). And he offers much more than just a history of school segregation, exploring major developments in the history of American education and efforts to protect civil rights outside the schools. Even when Douglas examines the nexus between race and education, he recognizes that segregated schooling was only one component of a complex system of racially unequal education. Of the many strengths of this book, one that stands out isDouglas's ability to make all these issues relevant, even essential, to his account. It is tighdy written and never digressive, despite itswide-ranging subject matter. The contributions of Jim Crow Moves North are numerous and significant. Although there have been local or state-level studies of civ? rights activism in the North during the Jim Crow era, this book highlights continuities in the fight against segregated education across the nation. Douglas powerfully demonstrates the prevalence of northern 144 Michigan Historical Review school segregation as official policy. White supremacy was a fact of life throughout the North, leading to social inequalities that were often as severe as those in the South. The North also mirrored the South in that African Americans in both regions were ambivalent toward school desegregation. This is an understudied topic, and Douglas offers an important beginning toward understanding those blacks who opposed, or simply questioned, integrationist efforts. In many ways, however, the challenge to Jim Crow education charted a distinct course in the North. Northern attempts at reform often focused on state and local governments, and these efforts involved not only litigation but also extensive lobbying, boycotting, and protests?all of which would have been largely futile and prohibitively dangerous in the South during this period. Many northern states had statutes dating from the late nineteenth century prohibiting segregated schools. Douglas points to widespread defiance of these unambiguous antidiscrimination laws as an example of the ways in which legislation that runs counter to majority opinion and cultural norms can be made ineffective. Unlike the struggle in the South, the northern batde was not to change laws but to bring cultural and political norms into line with already existing laws so as to change social practices. The resolution of the battles against school segregation also played out much differendy in the North than in the South. Whereas the civ? rights movement eventually resulted in significant integration in the South, northern school desegregation largely faded. Demographic transformations?most notably the growth of black inner-city populations and "white flight"?led to increased segregation, even in the absence of official policies. This disheartening development makes for a fitting conclusion to a book that so powerfully challenges any comforting assumptions we might have had about race, regions, law, and the schools. Christopher W. Schmidt Dartmouth College Nora Faires and Nancy Hanflik. JewishUfe in the Industrial Promised Land, 1855-2005. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2005. Pp. 240. Bibliography. Index. Notes. Photographs. Cloth, $29...