BSC history professor pens book about landmark 1969 Supreme Court case

For Immediate Release
Mar. 18, 2019

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—Dr. William Hustwit, associate professor of history at Birmingham-Southern College, recently unveiled his new book, Integration Now: Alexander v. Holmes and the End of Jim Crow Education.

Recovering the history of an often-ignored landmark Supreme Court case, Hustwit assesses the significant role that Alexander v. Holmes (1969) played in integrating the South’s public schools. He traces the progression of the Alexander case to show how grassroots activists in Mississippi operated hand-in-glove with lawyers and judges involved in the litigation. By combining a narrative of the larger legal battle surrounding the case and the story of the local activists who pressed for change, Hustwit offers an innovative account of a definitive legal decision that reaches from the cotton fields of Holmes County to the chambers of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.

“Although Brown v. Board of Education has rightly received the lion’s share of historical analysis, its ambiguous language for implementation led to more than a decade of delays and resistance by local and state governments,” he said. “Alexander v. Holmes required ‘integration now,’ and less than a year later, thousands of children were attending integrated schools.”

He says the inspiration for his new book came from asking people when they’d attended their first integrated school.

“People would usually reply that they first integrated around 1970 or 1971,” he said. “But they never knew about Alexander v. Holmes’ role in putting them in an integrated classroom.”

Hustwit, a native of Wooster, Ohio, has been a member of the history faculty at BSC since 2013. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Kenyon College and his Ph.D. from the University of Mississippi, where he specialized in 20th century U.S. history.

His first book, James J. Kilpatrick: Salesman for Segregation, was published from his dissertation. In 2012, Hustwit’s article in the Journal of Southern History, “From Caste to Color Blindness,” won the Ronald T. and Gayla D. Farrar Media and Civil Rights History Award from the University of South Carolina.