Brown v. Board of Education at Fifty

Clarke Rountree is Department Chair of Communication Arts at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

• 1 Introduction2 Revisiting the Case ofPlessy v. Ferguson3 Dissent as Prophecy: Justice John Marshall Harlan's Dissent inPlessy v. Ferguson as the Religious Rhetoric of Law4 Setting the Stage forBrown v. Board of Education: The NAACP's Litigation Campaign Against the "Separate But Equal" Doctrine5 From Natural to Cultural Inferiorirty: The Symbolic Reconstruction of White Supremacy in Brown v. Board of Education6 The Rhetorica of Virginia's Massive Resistance Movement7 The Supreme Court's Rhetoric of Legitimization

The chapters complement each other and provide additional insight when read together. By illustrating how rhetorical strategies created, sustained, challenged, and, ultimately, reversed educational segregation in the United States, the collection demonstrates the real value of the rhetorical perspective.