Jean Van Delinder poses questions in "Behind the Brown Case." Discuss them. What were the native patterns of accommodation and paternalism that had to be broken for local change to occur? What forces led the way for protest? Who led the forces of resistance? How did the resistance use the same ideals of American freedom and liberty to justify the exclusion of a whole class of citizens on the basis of race?

"Behind the Brown Case" casts the American legal system as one that historically defaults to the views of white nationalism in any case for which there are not explicit and immutable legal protections for minorities. It also characterizes the educational system as belonging to a long tradition of oppression, relegating aspiring students to marginal institutions for "colored children." She credits a rising solidarity between black people as the main impetus for the strength of the challenge to the status quo made by Brown v. Board of Education. Coalitions seized opportunities to protest, strategically striking when institutional adjustments were being made, such as the widespread separation of elementary schools from middle schools as distinct programs.
These annexations, as well as the growth of Topeka, created policy inconsistencies which disrupted systemic segregation programs. Jean Van Delinder credits not the specific individuals who history already honors as human rights heroes in Brown v. Board, but more generally the thousands of unnamed people who protested in solidarity and in peace, reacting strategically to the unique political conditions of Topeka. Van Delinder thinks of the victory in the case as less of a historical inevitability than a historical contingency, the product of intense humanistic reflection, effort, and luck.