Justice Deferred: Race and the Supreme Court

465 Pages·2021·47.238 MB·English

by  Armand Derfner and Vernon Burton

JUSTICE DEFERRED

JUSTICE
DEFERRED
RACE AND THE SUPREME COURT
ORVILLE VERNON BURTON
and ARMAND DERFNER
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts & London, England 2021
Copyright © 2021 by Orville Vernon Burton and Armand Derfner
all rights reserved
Printed in the United States of Amer i ca
First printing
Jacket design by Cymone Wilder
9780674258860 (EPUB)
9780674258846 (PDF)
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: Burton, Orville Vernon, author. | Derfner, Armand, author.
Title: Justice deferred : race and the Supreme Court / Orville Vernon
Burton and Armand Derfner.
Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020047829 | ISBN 9780674975644 (cloth)
Subjects: LCSH: Race discrimination—Law and legislation—United States. |
Civil rights—United States. | United States. Supreme Court—History.
Classification: LCC KF4755 .B87 2021 | DDC 342.7308/73—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020047829
To Georganne Burton and
Mary Giles

Contents
Note to the Reader ix
Introduction 1
1 The Constitution, the Supreme Court, and the
Road to Civil War 12
2 A New Birth of Freedom 34
3 The Supreme Court in Reconstruction 56
4 The Supreme Court and the Jim Crow
Counterrevolution 84
5 Beginning the Long, Slow Turnaround 112
6 Breaking New Ground 140
7 The End of Separate but Equal 167
8 Opposing Forces: Massive Re sis tance and the
Civil Rights Movement 197
9 A New Birth of Freedom, Again 223
10 Change in the Court 246
11 The War of Words: “Purpose” and “Effect” 274
12 Affirmative Action: Color Blind or Color Conscious 295
13 The Color of Criminal Justice 320
Conclusion 338
Notes 345 Acknowl edgments 419 Illustration Credits 423
Index of Cases 425 General Index 435

Note to the Reader
We have written this book for general readers, historians, students, and
lawyers, and we have tried to accommodate all t hese audiences while telling
the story as comprehensively as pos si ble in a manageable length.
This book is indebted to a vast lit er a ture on race and the law in the
United States, and we gratefully recognize the thousands of observers and
scholars who have studied and chronicled these topics. Because the lit er a­
ture is so extensive, the endnotes in the book are limited to the most es­
sential citations and commentary. A dedicated website supplements the
endnotes with added material on many of the cases and historical topics;
it also includes links to census reports and relevant web resources. We en­
courage you to visit the website: http:// justice ­ deferred . clemson . edu.
An Index of Cases provides full case citations along with the pages in
the book where the cases are referenced.
We have generally used modern terminology in the book except in di­
rect quotations from e arlier times, where readers w ill see the “n­w ord” and
other offensive epithets. We chose to leave in these terms in order to convey
the often grim real ity of this history.