Courts or Legislature? -- Desegregation

Historically, Congress had the greatest impact on desegregation. In schools alone, the percentage of black schoolchildren attending school with whites skyrocketed after 1964's Civil Rights Act. This piece of legislation was, however, ten years after the initial Brown v. Board decision, so it would be unfair to say that the courts were ineffective during the ten years after Brown because there was really no significant civil rights legislation until 1964.

The criticism of Brown about limited enforcing power and about generating incredible backlash that worsened race relations is not all that fair. First, the Court is designed to be able to make tough decisions that the majority of people may not agree with but that are constitutional. I seriously doubt that there would not have been any backlash if Congress had written legislation regarding desegregation. Second, Brown was simply a start-up point for civil rights since the decision was needed to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson. Pursuit of federal legislation would not have been a better strategy because it would have taken an incredible mobilization of civil rights activism to get enough support to pass legislation through in 1954. In reality, it took the combined efforts of the Supreme Court and Congress to achieve desegregation.