From savage to Negro : anthropology and the construction of race, 1896-1954 / Lee D. Baker.

"Lee D. Baker explores what racial categories mean to the American public and how these meanings are reinforced by anthropology, popular culture, and the law. Focusing on the period between two landmark Supreme Court decisions -- Plessy v. Ferguson (the so-called "separate but equal" doctrine established in 1896) and Brown v. Board of Education (the public school desegregation decision of 1954) -- Baker silluminates the ways in which social scientists have responded to and shaped the politics of race in the United States. He paints a vivid picture of the relationships between specific African American and White scholars and documents interracial efforts to use the social sciences as a means of fighting for racial equality."--Provided by publisher.