The Ghost of Jim Crow: How Southern Moderates Used Brown v. Board of Education to Stall Civil Rights. By Anders Walker. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. xii, 241 pp. $34.95, ISBN 978-0-19-518174-6.)

Abstract

Brown v. Board of Education (1954) is often seen as fueling violent resistance by southern whites, but in Anders Walker's The Ghost of Jim Crow, “moderate” southern governors sought instead to maintain segregation by discouraging extremism, promoting law and order, and burnishing their state's image. These methods, they hoped, would avoid harsh northern media attention that fueled political pressure for stronger federal civil rights enforcement. The book illuminates this political dynamic through portraits of governors J. P. Coleman of Mississippi, Luther Hodges of North Carolina, and LeRoy Collins of Florida. Walker argues that these governors used “strategic constitutionalism,” interpreting Brown in a way that enabled them to justify maintaining segregated schools while at the same time opposing extreme actions that they felt would draw federal involvement. As governor of Mississippi, Coleman did not simply resist Brown but sought to “orchestrate a reinterpretation of it” (p. 14). Coleman contended that Brown forbade states from using race as an overt feature of school assignment policies but did not preclude states from adopting other criteria, such as academic performance and “moral” background. Relying on facially neutral criteria, school districts could maintain substantial racial segregation without the threat of federal court interference. To strengthen his state's ability to avoid federal intervention, Coleman promoted law and order and opposed violence (such as the 1955 killing of Emmet Till). He sought to expand the state highway patrol, a police force under the governor's direction that might help rein in the power of local sheriffs.