Paradoxes of Desegregation

"Paradoxes of Desegregation brings fresh insight to the struggle that unfolded around education in South Carolina, demonstrating its formative role in shaping the possibilities and limitations of the civil rights movement in the Palmetto State. Scott Baker offers a textured analyses of the African American challenge to unequal schools and the parallel efforts of white policymakers to resist and contain black access to public education. At the heart of the book is a compelling account of a movement that grew from the aspirations of black communities against the backdrop of major shifts in the social, economic, and political landscape of South Carolina and the nation from the Depression to the mid-1970s. This is a history that explains much about what changed, what failed to change, and why. It is a stunning achievement."—Patricia Sullivan, author of Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era and editor of Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from the Civil Rights Years

"R. Scott Baker's case study of desegregation of public education in Charleston gives much needed support to the reality of white supremacy as institutional, long-lived and not always masked in hoods. This is especially important in the twenty-first century as attempts are made to minimize discussion of the extent to which power holders will and did go to resist change."—Millicent Ellison Brown, associate professor of history, North Carolina A&T State University

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title
Honorable Mention, the 2007 History of Education Society Book Award