Summary

The national narrative of the civil rights movement focuses on racial inequalities in the South, however, there were many injustices and civil rights struggles outside that area, including in the North and West. Northern activists had to confront the claim that racism did not exist in the North, and that disparities existed because Black people had not adopted the right behaviors for success. To challenge this myth is to challenge the myth of Northern liberalism. Though many claimed that inequalities in the North were circumstantial and not supported by laws or policies, Theoharis will prove otherwise.

In February 1964, nearly half a million students and teachers stayed home to protest the New York City Board of Education's refusal to create a desegregation plan. A decade after Brown v. Board, many people in positions of power in New York...