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18 Harv. Blackletter L. J. 1 (2002)
Critical Race Theory: New Strategies for Civil Rights in the New Millenium

handle is hein.journals/hblj18 and id is 5 raw text is: CRITICAL RACE THEORY: NEw STRATEGIES FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM? Bernie D Jones* I. INTRODUCTION The development of critical race theory points to a new direction taken by civil rights activists in the wake of civil rights setbacks in the 1970s and 1980s when official government policy no longer supported an expansive civil rights agenda. The United States Supreme Court began limiting and eviscerating prece- dents that once promised full equality for African Americans under the law. Critical race theorists who fought against this declension from civil rights began storytelling, in which they gave voice to the contemporary civil rights struggle. They explained the situation of outsiders, people of color dispossessed by the law. The Parts of this Article-civil rights litigation before the Supreme Court under Earl Warren and under Chief Justices Burger and Rehnquist, the breakup of the African American liberal coalition, the storytelling response, and protest- explain the development of critical race theory, its antecedents in the legal liber- alism that enabled the civil rights movement, and its rejection of formalism on the Supreme Court. The critical race theorists had as their objective, ending ex- clusive reliance upon civil rights litigation, storytelling to broaden public con- sciousness of racism and discrimination under the law, and protest reminiscent of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In 1969, the civil rights movement was m crisis. The decade-long struggle for equal rights m the South had crested, and the momentum that began with Brown v. Board of Education1 had begun to dissipate. Al- though Congress had passed two pieces of legislation that promised to eradicate the evils of Southern apartheid, the Civil Rights Act of 19642 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965,3 the future looked bleak. Martin Luther King had been assassinated the year before, and his attempts to bring the civil rights movement to the North had come to naught. Northern blacks * Ph.D. candidate m history, University of Virginia. J.D., New York University School of Law, 1992; M.A., University of Virginia, 1997 This Article is part of a dissertation in progress. Much thanks to the many people who helped m this project, all of whom it is impossible to name here. But I would especially like to thank Charles W. McCurdy, my advisor and dissertation chair, and the other members of my dissertation com- mittee: Brian Balogh, Alex Johnson, and Joseph Kett. 1. Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483 (1954). 2. July 2,1964, EL. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241. 3. August 6,1965, EL. 89-110,79 Stat. 437

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