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13th Amendment
This amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude. Abraham Lincoln knew that he would have to follow the Emancipation Proclamation, which guaranteed freedom but didn’t abolish slavery, would have to be passed in order for slaves to achieve real freedom. This amendment was the first step in the Reconstruction era after the civil war. -
14th Amendment
The 14th amendment was the second amendment of the reconstruction period. This amendment addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of laws. The amendment was bitterly contested by southern states but they were forced to ratify it in order for them to regain representation in Congress. The Equal Protection Clause is also later used in important Supreme Court cases like Brown v. Board of Education. -
15th Amendment
This amendment prohibits federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen’s race. This allowed for the protection of black voters. Southern states were able to disenfranchise African Americans by the use of poll taxes, literacy tests, and other means. -
Jim Crow
These laws mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities in Southern states of the former Confederacy. These laws state that the practice of separate but equal should be the social status for African Americans in America. -
Poll Taxes
In U.S. practice, a poll tax was used as a de facto or implicit pre-condition of the exercise of the ability to vote. This tax emerged in some states of the United States in the late 19th century as part of the Jim Crow laws. After the ability to vote was extended to all races by the enactment of the Fifteenth Amendment, many Southern states enacted poll tax laws as a means of restricting eligible voters. -
Literacy Tests
A literacy test, in the context of American political history from the 1890s to the 1960s, refers to the government practice of testing the literacy of potential citizens at the federal level, and potential voters at the state level. This was one of the harsh attempts of the south to disenfranchise African Americans from voting. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal". -
19th Amendment
The Nineteenth Amendment prohibits any United States citizen from being denied the right to vote on the basis of sex. The Constitution allows the states to determine the qualifications for voting, and until the 1910s most states disenfranchised women. The amendment was the culmination of the women's suffrage movement in the United States, which fought at both state and national levels to achieve the vote. It effectively overruled Minor v. Happersett, in which a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that -
Korematsu v. United States
Early in World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, granting the U.S. military the power to ban tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry from areas deemed critical to domestic security. Korematsu claimed it was against the constitution, however the court decided in favor of the president. -
Sweatt v. Painter
Sweatt v. Painter was a U.S. Supreme Court case that successfully challenged the "separate but equal" doctrine of racial segregation established by the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson. The case was influential in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education four years later. -
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the 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, which allowed state-sponsored segregation, insofar as it applied to public education. Handed down on May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court's unanimous decision stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
This was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. This led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses to be unconstitutional. This event pushed society to see the truth behind segregation. -
Ruby Bridges
Ruby Bridges is an American activist known for being the first black child to attend an all-white elementary school in the South.In spring of 1960, Bridges was one of six black children in New Orleans to pass the test that determined whether or not they could go to the all-white school. She was part of the slow moving integration process that occured during this time. -
Affirmative Action
Affirmative Action was first introduced by President Kennedy in 1961. This was the fight for equality between minority groups and majority groups. It was to be the end of segregation and inequality. The fight for Affirmative Action took a while to come into place and a while longer to take action, but ut was what needed to happen. -
24th Amendment
The 24th amendment prohibits Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax. This was not ruled in the Supreme Court until Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections that poll taxes for state elections violated the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a landmark piece of civil rights legislation in the United States 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 facilities that served the general public. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
This prohibits racial discrimination in voting. 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. -
Loving v. Virginia
Mildred Loving and Richard Loving were sentenced to a year in prison for marrying each other. Mildred was a black woman and Richard was a white man. In this time, there were restrictions to prevent mixed marriages. The Lovings were violating Virginia’s anti-miscegenation statue as well as the Racial Integrity Act of 1924. After the case was taken to the Supreme Court, the prohibition given to them was deemed unconstitutional on June 12, 1967. This caused the case of Pace v. Alabama to be overtur -
Robert Kennedy Speech
On a plane to Indianapolis Kennedy knew King has been shot. When he arrived, Kennedy was informed that King had died. Despite fears of riots and concerns for his safety, Kennedy went ahead with plans to attend a rally at 17th and Broadway in the heart of Indianapolis's African-American ghetto. That evening Kennedy addressed the crowd, many of whom had not heard about King's assassination. Instead of the rousing ampaign speech they expected, Kennedy offered brief, impassioned remarks for peace. -
Reed v. Reed
Reed v. Reed was an Equal Protection case in the United States in which the Supreme Court ruled that the administrators of estates cannot be named in a way that discriminates between sexes. -
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke upheld affirmative action, allowing race to be one of several factors in college admission policy. However, the court ruled that specific quotas, such as the 16 out of 100 seats set aside for minority students by the University of California, Davis School of Medicine, were impermissible. -
Equal Rights Amendment
The Equal Rights Amendment was a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution designed to guarantee equal rights for women. The ERA was originally written by Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman. In 1923, it was introduced in the Congress for the first time. In 1972, it passed both houses of Congress and went to the state legislatures for ratification. -
Bowers v. Hardwick
This case has to do with homosexuals having intercouse in the bedroom. In Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution does not protect the right of gay adults to engage in private, consensual sodomy. The case began in August 1982, when Atlanta police arrived at the residence of Michael Hardwick to arrest him for failing to appear in court on charges of public drinking. A roommate let the police into Hardwick's home. As the police searched for Hardwick in the house, t -
Americans with Disabilities Act
The ADA is a wide-ranging civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability. It has similar protections against discrimination to Americans with disabilities as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In addition, unlike the Civil Rights Act, the ADA also requires covered employers to provide reasonable accommodations to employees with disabilities, and imposes accessibility requirements on public accommodations. -
Lawrence v. Texas
This case is similar to Bowers v. Hardwick. In Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the Supreme Court ruled that state laws banning homosexual sodomy are unconstitutional as a violation of the right to privacy. This case went to the supreme court. The court ruled that the Homosexual Conduct law was unconstitutional and overturned the conviction of Lawrence and Garner. -
Fisher v. Texas
Abigail Fisher brought to the attention that schools were discriminating admissions because of race. She was a white undergraduate student, and this made her case well heard. In the 2-1 ruling in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the judges wrote that they were “persuaded” that Texas necessarily used race in admissions process, noting that the courts have already settled that universities use race to achieve diversity or to promote equality of opportunity. -
Indiana's Gay Right Court Case
The fight for equality doesn't stop with race.The fight for gay rights has been continuously happening through the years. A case for a homosexual couple in Indiana could change it all, however the case is put on hold. WHen will homosexuals get the equality they've been fighting for?
