Websightings: Brown v. Board of Education

E. Wayne Carp

The Brown v. Board of Education Digital Archive, maintained by the University of Michigan Library (at http://www.lib.umich.edu/exhibits/brownarchive/index.html), is a comprehensive website containing both national and local primary sources, bibliographies, and other web pages relevant to the 1954 Supreme Court case that struck down state-sponsored racial desegregation in America’s public schools. Under the heading of “Content,” there are eight subject pages. The first, “Court Cases,” contains the complete text of twenty-six Supreme Court cases, including the oral arguments, in chronological order from Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) through Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), to Jennifer Gratz v. Lee Bollinger (2003). The second and third subject pages, “Ann Arbor and Public School Integration” and “Ann Arbor and Michigan Statistics,” contain archival primary sources and census data that look at the desegregation of the Ann Arbor Public School District. The fourth, “Resegregation Issues,” investigates recent trends in American schools; the fifth, “Image Gallery,” contains photographic images from the Charlotte Observer (N.C.) showing efforts to desegregate that city’s Central High School in September 1957; the sixth, “Bibliography,” consists of an extensive bibliography of books, newspaper stories, videos, and Web pages; the seventh, “Oral Arguments of Brown,” contains the only the oral argument from Brown II; and the eighth subject page, “Oral Histories,” consists of five oral histories from members of the University of Michigan community who lived through the period. The site also has a heading entitled “Sites of Interest,” under which are listed twenty-seven additional websites treating Brown. Many of these have been created specifically to celebrate the statute’s fiftieth anniversary, such as Brown University’s http://www.brownat50.org/, or to mark an event related to Brown, such as Little Rock High School’s 40th Anniversary http://www.centralhigh57.org/.

The site is easy to use, and for one not familiar with the subject, informative. The primary source material on the desegregation of the Ann Arbor school system is a valuable contribution to historical knowledge and ideal for the classroom. Nevertheless, except for the page containing the Supreme Court cases, there is not much depth to the site. There are only thirty photographic images; for additional photos one must have password permission from the University of Michigan. The five oral histories are short. The “Oral Arguments of Brown” subject page repeats data that can be also found on the “Court Cases” subject page.

Brown v. Board of Education 50th Anniversary Bibliography (at http://www.arl.org/diversity/naacp.html) is sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). It offers an extensive bibliography for both researchers and teachers. It has a “Table of Contents” with seven chapters. Chapter one is headed “Library of Congress Subject Headings” for Brown v. Board of Education cases. There are twenty-nine different Library of Congress subject headings, none of which are Brown v. Board of Education. (The closest is “Topeka (Kan.). Board of Education-Trials, litigation, etc.”). The second chapter, “Manuscript Resources,” contains the names and locations of twelve manuscript collections of important individuals involved in Brown, such as Earl Warren, Felix Frankfurter, Thurgood Marshall, and prominate institutions, such as the NACCP. Chapter three, entitled “Images Documenting the Legal Battle to Dismantle School Desegregation in the US,” identifies four photo collections from the Library of Congress: the NAACP Photo Collection, the New York World-Telegram and Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection, the U.S. News and World Report Magazine Photograph Collection, and the Kenneth B. Clark Unprocessed Collection. Examples of specific images are provided from each of the collections. Chapter four, “Films & Video,” contains an annotated list of eleven films ranging from part of a PBS four-part series on American public education (School: The Story of American Public Education - Episode 3: Separate and Unequal, 1950-1980 (2001) [55 min.] to Brown v. Board of Education (1986), a ten-minute film narrated by Ramsey Clark, aimed at high school audiences. Chapter five, “Oral Histories,” identifies two collections: "Brown v. Topeka Board of Education Collection" located in the Kansas State Historical Society, and the "Ralph J. Bunche Oral History Collection," located at Howard University.

Chapter six, “Resources for Educators” is divided into six additional subject pages. The first subject page of chapter six, “Books for Young Adults,” provides an annotated list of thirteen books for young adults. Some of the books are clearly labeled for children age 7-10 and 9-12. Subject page two, “Books for Educators,” contains an annotated list of seventeen books on Brown, almost half of which are designed for students in grades 6-12. Subject page three, “Articles for Educators,” contains five interpretative articles on Brown by influential civil rights leaders looking back at the case at eighteen, twenty, twenty-five, and forty years. Subject page four, “Magazine Special Issues for Educators,” names three magazines, The Brown Quarterly, Cobblestone, and Footsteps, devoted to the Brown case. Subject page five, “Internet Sites for Educators,” contains forty annotated websites divided between the subjects of Brown v. Board of Education, Civil Rights. They contain primary sources, legal cases, and oral histories; unfortunately a number of the sites were not functioning. Subject page six, “Lesson Plans and Classroom Activities for Educators,” contains twenty annotated websites of which 25 percent failed to function; the vast majority are designed for K-12 students, not for educators. Chapter seven, “ARL Libraries with Special Collections for Civil Rights,” identifies thirteen depositories (eleven university libraries, the Library of Congress, and the New York Public Library) containing manuscript sources on the civil rights movement that are accessible online.

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