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13th Amendment
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery but such factors like Black Codes, white supremacist violence, still existed. -
14th Amendment
The Fourteenth Amendment addresses citizen rights and equal protection of the laws, and was proposed in reponse to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War. This formed to the basis for landmark decisions such as Roe vs. Wade and Bush vs. Gore. -
15th Amendment
The 15th Amendment prohibits the federal governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's race, color or previous condition of servitude. THe law did not work that well due to defranchising. -
Poll Taxes & Literacy Tests
A poll tax was used as a de facto or implicit pre-condition of the ability to vote. This tax emerged in some states of the U.S in the late 19th century as part of the Jim Crow Laws.
A literacy test refers to the government practice of testing the literacy of protential citizens at the federal level, and potential voters at the state level. -
Jim Crow
The Jim Crow laws were racial segregation laws enacted between 1876 and 1965 in the United States at the state and local level. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities Southern states of the former Confederacy with a separate but equal status for African Americans. -
Plessy vs. Ferguson
Plessy vs. Ferguson is a United States Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctine of "separate but equal". -
19th Amendment
The 19th Amendment prohibits any U.S citizen from being denied the right to vote on the basis of sex. The amendment was the culmination of women's suffrage movement. -
Korematsu vs US
This court case challenged the constitutionallity of Executive order 9066, which ordered Japanese Americans to go to internment camps. The Court sided with the government ruling the exclusion constitutional. -
Sweatt vs. Painter
Sweatt vs. Painter was a U.S Supreme Court case that successfully challenged the "separate but equal" doctrine of racial segregation. The case involved a man named Heman Sweatt who was refused admission to the School of Law of the Unviversity of Texas whose president, Theophilus Painter, prohibited integrated education. The court unanimously agreed that the University of Texas could not stave off desegregation at its law school by instantly creating a black-only facility. -
Brown vs. Board of Education
Brown vs. Board of Education was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconsitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the pulic transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. The campaign lasted from when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person and ended when a federal ruling took effect and led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses to be unconstitutional -
Ruby Bridges
Ruby Bridges was the first African American child to attened an all white elementart school in the South. -
Affirmative Action
Affirmative action is the policy of favoring members of a disadvantaged group who are perceived to suffer from discrimination within a culture. It was used to promote actions that achieve non-discrimination. -
24th Amendment
The 24th Amendment prohibits both congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax and other types of tax. -
Civil RIghts Act of 1964
Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a landmark piece of civil rights legislation in the U.S that outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilitites that served the general public. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the U.S that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the American Civil RIghts Movement, and Congress later amended the Act five times to expand its protections. -
Loving v Virginia
This court case has to do with interracial marriage. The couple that had gotten married and sentenced to jail argued the constitutionality of the law and it made it all the way to the Supreme Court. With the last ruling deciding that this law was unconstitutional and bi-racial couples could get married. -
Robert Kennedy's Speech on the Assassination of MLK
Robert Kennedy's speech was given in Indianapolis, Indiana. Kenndy was campaigning to earn the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination when he learned that King has been assassinated in Memphis. -
Reed v Reed
A married couple who had separated were trying to decide who would gain control of their deceased son's estate. The court said the "males were preferred over females". It was then later decided that the 14th equal protection act protected Mrs. Reed from this happening. -
Regents Of the U of C vs Bakke
Multiple college students had applied that were of a different race besides Caucasian. They were all denied which led them to sue the school. It was later decided that the school could not discriminate a student just by race. -
Equal Rights Amendment
The Equal Rights Amendment was a proposed amendment to the U.S Constitution designed to guarantee equal rights for women. Through 1977, the amendment received 35 of the necessary 38 state ratifications. Five states later rescinded their ratifications. -
Bowers v Hardwick
The Supreme Court decided that it was illegal for homosexuals to partake in sexual activities. People argued that this was discrimination against homosexuals, and was later overturned in 2003.. -
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990
The ADA is a law that prohibits discrimination based on disability. The ADA also requires covered employers to provide reasonable acommodations to employees with disabilities, and imposes accessibility requirements on public accommodations. -
Same-sex marriage in Indiana
Indiana has restricted marriage to male-female couples by statute since 1986. By legislation passed in 1997, it denied recognition to same-sex relationships established in other jurisdictions. A lawsuit challenging the state's refusal to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples, Baskin v. Bogan, won a favorable ruling from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana on June 25, 2014. Until the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit granted an emergency stay of the dist -
Lawrence v Texas
This court case is much like Bowers v Hardwick. Where homosexuals argued that it should be legal for them to have consensual sex. The court decided with homosexuals overturning the Bowers v Hardwick. Ultimately making homosexual sex legal all throughout the US. -
Fisher v University of Texas
Abigail Fisher argued that the admissions rate for different races was inconsistent. The Supreme Court overruled the lower courts decision that sided with the university, which allowed more students of different race to be accepted to the University of Texas.
