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AP Gov
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Dred Scott v. Sandford
A landmark case of the Supreme Court case in March of 1857. The U.S. Supreme Court, led by Chief Justic Roger B. Taney, declared that all blacks, slaves and the free, were not and could never become citizzens of the United States. The court at the time also declared that the 1820 Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, thus allowing for slavery to occur in all the territories that it was previously banned in. -
13th Amendment
The 13th amendment abolished slavery in the United States and provided that slavery and involuntary servitude would not exist in the United States unless the individual was convicted of a crime and that was their punishment. -
14th Amendment
This amendment granted citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States" which included former slaves who had just been freed after the Civil War. This essentialy gave all the previous slaves citizenship. -
15th Amendment
This amendment granted African American men the right to vote. It declared that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on the account of race, color, or previous." This furthered the rights that African Americans had recieved with the 14th and 13th Amendments. -
White Primaries
White Primaries were primary elections in the Southern states within the United States which only white voters were allowed to participate. This was meant to prevent African Americans from voting, thus restricting their rights. After the 1944 Supreme Court Smith v. Allwright, all white primaries were ruled to violate the law. -
Poll Taxes
Poll taxes were taxes enacted in Southern states to have the effect of preventing many blacks, as well as many poor whites, from voting because the payment of the tax was a prerequisite to vote. These were deemed unconstitutional by the 24th Amendment in 1964. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson was a 1896 supreme court decision that upheld the doctrine of “separate but equal” in which the races could be separated if each race had a separate but equal facilities to use. This remained the law of the land till 1954 when Brown v. Board of Education overturned Plessy v. Ferguson. -
Nineteenth Amendment
This amendment granted American women the right to vote. Previously, women did not share all the same rights as men, some would argue they still don't today either. -
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark supreme court case in 1954 which found “separate but equal” public schools were unconstitutional. Also this case was a major driving integration in the south -
Affirmative Action
Affirmative action was first introduced to the Us in the early 60’s as a way to combat racial discrimination in the hiring process but over the years it was grown to areas such as college admissions and to prevent discrimination based on sex as well. Affirmative really legally started in 1961 with JFK’s executive order 11246 which required the federal government to not discriminate in the hiring process based on a number of factors including race and called on the national government to “take af -
24th Amendment
The 24 Amendment abolished the poll tax for all federal elections, yet not state elections. This was to allow African Americans, and a few poor white men, to have the right to vote in federal elections, thus allowing them to enact the right they were promised by the 15th Amendment. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil RIghts Act of 1964 was said to end segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. This is considered one of the crowning legistlative achievements of the civil rights movement. Surpising to Southern Democrats, the addition of equal rights to females was passed along with equal rights to every other person. This was an advancement for both African Americans and women. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
This act outlawed literacy tests and poll taxes as a way of assessing whether anyone was fit or unfit to vote. Its impact was tremendous. By the end of 1966, only 4 out of the traditional 13 Southern states, had less than 50% of African Americans registered to vote. -
Reed v. Reed
Reed v. Reed was a supreme court case dealing with the the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment that ruled that the administrators of estates cannot be named in a way that discriminates between sexes. Also it was the first time the supreme court ruled that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited different treatment based on gender. -
Equal Rights Admenment
A purposed amendment to the US constitutional originally written by Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman in 1923 that called for equality of the sexes under the law and it was passed by both houses of congress in 1972 but it failed to get the required number of states to ratify it. Also since then there has been repeated calls for the ERA but none has been successful. -
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke was a 1978 supreme court case that upheld the constitutionality of affirmative action which let race be a factor in college admissions policy. But it also ruled the certain quotes for minority students were unconstitutional. -
Bowers v. Hardwick
Bowers v. Hardwick was a 1986 supreme court case that upheld Georgia’s sodomy law that banned oral and anal sex between homosexuals. The majority opinion of the supreme court argued that the constitution did not provide a "a fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy”. This decision was overturned in 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas. -
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 - law enacted by congress in 1990 and signed into law by George H. W. Bush on July 26th 1990. The ADA prevents discrimination based on disability and requires employers to reasonably accommodate employees with disabilities. Also the ADA imposed requirements for handicap accessibility in public places. -
Lawrence v. Texas
Lawrence v. Texas was a 2003 landmark supreme court case that struck down Texas’s sodomy law and invalided sodomy laws in 13 other states which made same sex sexual activity legal in every state in the US. Also this case directly overturned the court's previous decision in Bowers v. Hardwick.
