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Dred Scott v. Sandford
Dred Scott was a slave in Missouri. His master moved to Illinois and Louisiana and brought Scott with him to both. When they returned to Missouri, Scott filed a suit in Missouri court for his freedom, claiming that his residence in free territory made him a free man. After losing, Scott brought a new suit in federal court. Scott's master maintained that no black man or descendant of slaves could be a citizen in the sense of Article III of the Constitution. -
13th Amendment
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was passed in December 6, 1865, at the end of the Civil War with only a handful of Democrats supporting the Amendment in both Chambers of Congress. It was one of the Reconstruction Amendments. -
14th Amendment
The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution deals with U.S. citizenship and the rights of citizens. During the post-Civil War era, the 14th Amendment was one of the Reconstruction Amendments. Although the 14th Amendment was intended to protect the rights of the recently freed slaves, it has continued to play a major role in constitutional politics to this day. -
15th Amendment
The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude". The amendment created a split within the women's suffrage movement over the amendment not prohibiting denying the women the right to vote on account of sex. -
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Poll Taxes
A poll tax is a tax levied as a fixed sum on every liable individual. Although often associated with states of the former Confederacy, poll taxes were also in place in some northern and western states, including California, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Wisconsin. Poll taxes had been a major source of government funding among the colonies which formed the United States. -
White Primaries
White primaries were primary elections held in the Southern United States in which only white voters were permitted to participate. White primaries were established by the state Democratic Party units or by state legislatures in many Southern states after 1890. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court issued in 1896. It upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws for public facilities as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality – a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal". This legitimized the many state laws re-establishing racial segregation that had been passed in the American South after the end of the Reconstruction Era. The decision was handed down by a vote of 7 to 1. -
19th Amendment
The 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex. Until the 1910s, most states did not give women the right to vote. 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. -
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka 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 effectively overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896, which allowed state-sponsored segregation, insofar as it applied to public education. -
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Affirmative Action
Affirmative action policies are those in which an institution or organization actively engages in efforts to improve opportunities for historically excluded groups in American society. Affirmative action policies often focus on employment and education. In institutions of higher education, affirmative action refers to admission policies that provide equal access to education for those groups that have been historically excluded or underrepresented, such as women and minorities. -
24th Amendment
The 24th Amendment of the United States Constitution prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax. Southern states of the former Confederate States of America adopted poll taxes in laws of the late 19th century, after the Democratic Party had generally regained control of state legislatures, as a measure to prevent African Americans and often poor whites from voting. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a landmark civil rights and US labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requirements, racial segregation in schools, employment, and public accommodations. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the Civil Rights Movement and Congress later amended the Act five times to expand its protections. The Act secured the right to vote for racial minorities throughout the country, especially in the South. -
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. Because the Idaho Code made a distinction based on sex, the court reasoned that "it thus establishes a classification subject to scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause". -
Equal Rights Amendment
The Equal Rights Amendment is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution designed to guarantee equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex; it seeks to end the legal distinctions between men and women in terms of divorce, property, employment, and other matters. The amendment was introduced in Congress for the first time in 1921 and has prompted conversations about the meaning of legal equality for women and men ever since. -
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States. It upheld affirmative action, allowing race to be one of several factors in college admission policy. However, the court ruled that specific racial 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. -
Bowers v. Hardwick
Bowers v. Hardwick is a United States Supreme Court decision that upheld, in a 5–4 ruling, the constitutionality of a Georgia sodomy law criminalizing oral and anal sex in private between consenting adults, in this case with respect to homosexual sodomy, though the law did not differentiate between homosexual sodomy and heterosexual sodomy. This case was overturned in 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas. -
Americans with Disabilities Act
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability. It affords similar protections against discrimination to Americans with disabilities as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made discrimination based on race, religion, sex, national origin, and other characteristics illegal. -
Lawrence v. Texas
Lawrence v. Texas is a landmark civil rights case by the United States Supreme Court. The Court struck down the sodomy law in Texas in a 6–3 decision and, by extension, invalidated sodomy laws in 13 other states, making same-sex sexual activity legal in every U.S. state and territory. The Court overturned its previous ruling on the same issue in the 1986 case Bowers v. Hardwick, where it upheld a challenged Georgia statute and did not find a constitutional protection of sexual privacy.
