I am pleased to help to publicize a recent publication by a civil rights expert and friend, Professor Leland Ware. Professor Ware formerly was a trial attorney in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and is now the Louis L. Redding Chair and Professor of Law & Public Policy at the University of Delaware.

His most recent publication is titled:

Choosing Equality: Essays and Narratives on the Desegregation Experience

It was edited by both Professor Ware and Professor Robert L. Hayman Jr., of Widener University,  with a Foreword by Vice President Joe Biden.

An overview of the book follows:

The Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education has long been heralded as a landmark in the progress of civil rights in the United States. But as the forces opposing affirmative action and supporting resegregation have gained ground in recent years, its legacy has been questioned. Choosing Equality includes contributions that give voice to these concerns, yet it provides a strong challenge to this revisionist interpretation. The book positions the issues in the overall national context while focusing on them in the experience of one state, Delaware, that stands as a microcosm of the larger conflict.

This volume offers not only academic analyses of Delaware’s experience with Brown, set in the broader framework of the debate over its significance at the national level, but also the personal voices of many of the leading participants, from judges and lawyers down to community activists and the students who lived through this important era of the civil rights movement and saw how it changed their future by giving them hope.