Simple Justice Final

There are some books that every American needs to read in order to be a responsible citizen; this is one of those books. Simple Justice is really two books in one: the first deals with the horrific institution of slavery in the United States and the post-Civil War oppression of blacks in the form of Jim Crow laws; the second deals with the strategy that de-segregationists (principally the NAACP) used to dismantle the formal apartheid of the South. Evaluated solely on its subject matter, this book would merit the requirement of being read. The story of how Thurgood Marshall (then a top NAACP attorney, later U.S. Solicitor General, then U.S. Supreme Court Justice) chipped away at the "separate but equal" doctrine in small steps gives the reader an appreciation of how entrenched institutional racism was as recently as the mid-20th Century. In addition, the reader will gain an understanding of how what is arguably the most important decision of the Supreme Court of the 1900s came about.

There are several interesting points in the book that really sparked my curiosity. One of the really interesting parts was the court reaching its decision the court found that it was inconclusive if the original framers of the 14th Amendment intended to outlaw segregation in educational facilities. The court also took the attitude that social circumstances had changed regarding the role of public education since 1896 so much that the court simply could not be held by the Plessy ruling any more. The court also took the position that segregation was inherently harmful to minority groups.

But there's another reason to read Simple Justice. Richard Kluger is an amazingly gifted writer, and his powerful writing style makes you feel the pain that his characters endured as a result of slavery and Jim Crow laws. It was personally a very hard book to read because I hate hearing about the plight of other human beings. So for all the reader's out there, no means is this is a "fun" book to read; indeed, parts of it are incredibly unpleasant to read and will make you ashamed to be an American. But it's precisely because Kluger is able to evoke such shame that makes this book so important.

Also, I found part I of Kulger's book "Under the Color of Law" very interesting. One of the things of interest to me was how people during that time, both black and white, thought about the issues. I don't mean the hardcore abolitionists or "civil rights-soldiers" so much as the common white and black man, and also those political leaders, including the more powerful ones like President Lincoln who were somewhat more indirectly involved in the changes that eventually started to take place.Along with Kluger's perspective on the everyday black and white man, Kluger's volume about Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education contains plenty of sharp opinions about the Brown case and its true role in the history of American race relations. This section in Kluger's book is also an invaluable source of information about the folks who actually filed the historic lawsuits in the first place.

Another thing I found interesting was Kluger's ability to illustrate