All Deliberate Speed

On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren read the Supreme Court's opinion in Brown v. Board of Education from the bench. When he reached the conclusion - "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" - he paused. The decision was unanimous. All nine justices had agreed. Fifty-eight years of constitutional law had changed in an afternoon.

The case that produced that moment was not one case but five, consolidated from Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, and Washington, D.C. Behind each case were children - Linda Brown, Barbara Johns, Harry Briggs's son - who had been told by law that the school nearest their home was not available to them. Behind the cases were twenty years of deliberate, strategic litigation by Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, building the constitutional argument brick by brick until the moment was right to bring it before the Court.

All Deliberate Speed tells the full story of the most important constitutional decision in American history. From the children who were the plaintiffs to the lawyers who argued the case, from the doll tests that introduced psychology into constitutional law to Earl Warren's achievement of a unanimous Court, from the massive resistance of the 1950s and 1960s to the resegregation of American schools that has been underway for decades - this is the complete account of a decision that changed the law, inspired a movement, and left its promise unfinished.

"Separate but equal" is gone. The work Brown began is not.