Race and America

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

Background: Dred Scott (an African American) lived in two free states (Illinois

and Wisconson) before moving to a slave state. Argued that by living in a free state (a state where slavery was prohibited) he would be considered a free person, thus not having to succumb to any slave states laws.

Ruling: African Americans, whether enslaved or free, could not be

American citizens and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court and that the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in the federal territories, acquired after the creation of the United States

Impact?

Immediate impact regarding the economics of the North and South. Also helped reinforce certain principles that helped spark the Civil War.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

Background:

In 1892 Homer Plessy was jailed for sitting in the "White" car of the East Louisiana Railroad. Plessy was creole and could easily pass for white but under Louisiana law, he was considered black despite his light complexion and therefore required to sit in the "Colored" car. Plessy deliberately sat in the white section and identified himself as black, and was arrested.

Ruling: United States Supreme Court decision upheld the constitutionality

of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of “separate but equal”

Impact?

While the Court did not find a difference in quality between the whites-only and blacks-only railway cars, this was untrue in the case of most other separate facilities, such as: public toilets, cafés, and public schools, where the facilities designated for blacks were consistently of lesser quality than those for whites.

Williams v. Mississippi (1898)

Background: Henry Williams, had been convicted of murder by an all-white jury

and sentenced to be hanged. The plaintiff challenged the jury selection as the jury was selected from eligible voters thus the trial was inappropriate as the defendant's race was not represented by the jury. Blacks had been excluded from jury service following their effective disfranchisement under Mississippi's constitution of 1890. Its provisions for literacy and poll-tax qualifications essentially eliminated blacks as voters, and therefore from jury rolls, after 1892.

Result: The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected Williams' contention

in a 9-0 vote, ruling that he had not shown administration of the Mississippi suffrage provision was discriminatory.

Impact?

Other Southern states created new constitutions with provisions similar to those of Mississippi's through 1908, effectively disfranchising hundreds of thousands of blacks and tens of thousands of poor whites for decades.

Smith v. Allwright (1944)

Background: Lonnie E. Smith, a black voter, sued county election official

S. S. Allwright for the right to vote in a primary election being conducted by the Democratic Party. He challenged the 1923 state law that required all voters in its primary to be white. Texas claimed that the Democratic Party was a private organization that could set its own rules of membership.

Result: The Court agreed that the restricted primary denied Smith

and found in his favor, saying that the state had allowed discrimination to be practiced by delegating its authority to the Democratic Party.

Impact?

Became a foundational case when looking at voter’s rights and restrictions.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954)

Background: The Topeka Board of Education operated separate

elementary schools under a 1879 Kansas law, which permitted (but did not require) districts to maintain separate elementary school facilities for black and white students in 12 communities with populations over 15,000. The named plaintiff, Oliver L. Brown, was a parent of a third grader (girl) who had to walk six blocks to her school bus stop to ride to Monroe Elementary, her segregated black school one mile (1.6 km) away, while Sumner Elementary, a white school, was seven blocks from her house.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954)

Results:

United States Supreme Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896. Handed down on May 17, 1954, the Warren Court's unanimous (9–0) decision stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."

Impact?

Not everyone accepted the Brown v. Board of Education decision. In Virginia, Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr. organized the Massive Resistance movement that included the closing of schools rather than desegregating them.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Background: The bill was called for by President John F. Kennedy in his civil

rights speech of June 11, 1963, in which he asked for legislation "giving all Americans the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public—hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments", as well as "greater protection for the right to vote".

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Results:

Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 allowed the momentum that President Lyndon Johnson needed to pass the Act in Congress. President Johnson signed the Act into law on July 2, 1964.

Impact? The Civil Rights Act of

1964 had considerable impact on later civil rights legislation in the United States. It paved the way for future legislation that was not limited to African American civil rights.

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990—which has been called "the most important piece of federal legislation since the Civil Rights Act of 1964"—was influenced both by the structure and substance of the previous Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Voter Rights Act of 1965

Background: The United States Constitution granted each state complete

discretion to determine voter qualifications for its residents. After the Civil War, the three Reconstruction Amendments were ratified and limited this discretion. The Thirteenth Amendment (1865) prohibits slavery; the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) grants citizenship to anyone "born or naturalized in the United States" and guarantees every person due process and equal protection rights; and the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) provides that "[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

Voter Rights Act of 1965 Background:

Southern states generally sought to disenfranchise racial minorities during and after Reconstruction. From 1888 to 1908, Southern states legalized disenfranchisement by enacting Jim Crow laws; they amended their constitutions and passed legislation to impose various voting restrictions, including literacy tests, poll taxes, property-ownership requirements, moral character tests, requirements that applicants interpret particular documents, and grandfather clauses that allowed otherwise-ineligible persons to vote if their grandfathers voted (which excluded many African Americans whose grandfathers had been slaves or otherwise ineligible). During this period, the Supreme Court generally upheld efforts to discriminate against racial minorities. In Giles v. Harris (1903), the Court held that irrespective of the Fifteenth Amendment, the judiciary did not have the remedial power to force states to register racial minorities to vote.

Voter Rights Act of 1965

Background (Jim Crow Laws): Books shall not be interchangeable between the white and

colored schools, but shall continue to be used by the race first using them. -North Carolina

[The County Board of Education]: shall provide schools of two kinds; those for white children and those for colored children. -Texas

No colored barber shall serve as a barber [to] white women or girls. -Georgia

Voter Rights Act of 1965

Background (Jim Crow Laws) The board of trustees shall...maintain a separate building...on

separate ground for the admission, care, instruction, and support of all blind persons of the colored or black race. -Louisiana

It shall be unlawful for any amateur white baseball team to play baseball on any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of a playground devoted to the Negro race, and it shall be unlawful for any amateur colored baseball team to play baseball in any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of any playground devoted to the white race. -Georgia

No person or corporation shall require any white female nurse to nurse in wards or rooms in hospitals, either public or private, in which negro men are placed. -Alabama

Voter Rights Act of 1965

Background: On March 7 began the Selma to Montgomery marches in

which residents of Selma proceeded to Alabama's capital, Montgomery, to present Governor George Wallace with their grievances.

On the first march, demonstrators were stopped by state and local police on horseback at the Edmund Pettus Bridge outside Selma. The police shot tear gas into the crowd and trampled protesters. Televised footage of the scene, which became known as "Bloody Sunday", generated outrage across the country.

Voter Rights Act of 1965

Background: In the wake of the events in Selma, President Johnson,

addressing a joint session of Congress on March 15, called on legislators to enact expansive voting rights legislation. He concluded his speech with the words "we shall overcome", a major theme of the Civil Rights Movement. The legislation that Johnson referred to was the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was introduced in Congress two days later while civil rights leaders, now under the protection of federal troops, led a march of 25,000 people from Selma to Montgomery

Voter Rights Act of 1965

Results: It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson

during the height of the American Civil Rights Movement on August 6, 1965, and Congress later amended the Act five times to expand its protections. Designed to enforce the voting rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, the Act allowed for a mass enfranchisement of racial minorities throughout the country, especially in the South. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the Act is considered to be the most effective piece of civil rights legislation ever enacted in the country.

Impact? The Act facilitated a political

realignment of the Democratic and Republican parties. Conservative Southern Democrats dominated Southern politics. After Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Act into law, newly enfranchised racial minorities began to vote for liberal Democratic candidates throughout the South, and Southern white conservatives began to switch their party registration from Democrat to Republican. These dual trends caused the two parties to ideologically polarize, with the Democratic Party becoming more liberal and the Republican Party becoming more conservative.