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 blacksonly 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.