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Dred Scott v. Sandford
In this ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court said that enslaved people were not citizens of the United States and, thus, could not expect any protection from the federal government or the courts. The opinion also noted that Congress had no power to ban slavery from a Federal territory. -
13th Amendment
The Thirteenth Amendment was ratified on December 6, 1865. In the aftermath of the Civil War, this amendment outlawed slavery in the United States, ending things like the slave trade and slavery that had been legal in America for well over a hundred years. About four million people were freed and made American citizens as a result. -
14th Amendment
The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was the main amendment of the Reconstruction Amendments, which outlawed slavery, gave African-American men the right to vote, and secured full citizenship, due process, and equal protection of the laws to African-Americans. -
15th Amendment
The 15th Amendment guaranteed African-American men the right to vote and prohibited people from taking action against these African-American men to try to stop them from voting. Almost immediately after ratification, African Americans began to take part in running for office and voting. -
Plessy V. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson was important because it essentially confirmed the constitutionality of racial segregation. As a controlling lawful precedent, it deterred constitutional challenges to racial segregation for more than half a century until the U.S. Supreme Court finally overturned it in Brown V. Board of Education. -
White Primaries
White primaries were primary elections held in the Southern United States in which only white voters were permitted to participate in the election. (date was general time era) -
Nineteenth Amendment
Passed by Congress on June 4, 1919, and approved on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment gave women the right to vote. The 19th amendment legally ensures and protects American Women the right to vote. This took years and years of protesting. -
Brown v. Board of Education
In this monumental decision, the Supreme Court ruled that separating children in public schools established on race was unconstitutional. It signaled the end of legalized racial segregation in the schools of the United States, repealing the "separate but equal" principle outlined in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case. -
24th Amendment
The 24th amendment was crucial to the Civil Rights Movement as it ended required poll taxes that deterred many African Americans from voting. Poll taxes, which were legal in many southern states, effectively prevented African Americans from having political power, especially in the South. -
Poll Taxes
A Poll tax was a tax a person must pay before they were allowed to vote. Poll taxes were used in many southern states after the Reconstruction era to prohibit African-American citizens' right to vote. On January 23, 1964, the United States ratified the 24th Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting any poll tax in elections. -
Civil Rights Act 1964
The Act prohibited segregation and discrimination in public places like restaurants and stores and federally funded programs like schools. It also supported the enforcement of voting rights and the desegregation of schools. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
It outlawed the discriminatory voting practices used in many Southern States after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a requirement for voting. This act was viewed as a support for the 15th amendment. -
Affirmative Action
Affirmative action programs seek to aid minorities, women, and others who suffer from discrimination in employment or other services. This was implemented because of the bias that leaked into work, higher education, and housing. -
Reed v. Reed
The Reed v. Reed decision was the first time in history that the Court used the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to strike down a law that discriminated against women. -
Equal Rights Amendment
This amendment suggested eliminating all legal discrepancies "on account of sex." After winning the right to vote, women needed equal access to employment, education, and all other citizen opportunities. The amendment offered an assurance of women's freedom in public areas. -
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke is a 1978 Supreme Court case that held that a university's admissions criteria used race as a definite and exclusive base for an admission decision that violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. -
Bowers V. Hardwick
The supreme court ruled during this trial that the due process clause in the fifth and fourteenth Amendments does not protect the fundamental right to engage in sex with other men. Kathryn: The dissenting opinion stated that homosexual relations are "a fundamental right upon homosexuals to have sex with other gay men." -
Americans With Disabities Act
The Americans with Disabilities Act became law in 1990. The ADA is a civil rights law that forbids discrimination and bias against people with disabilities in all places of public life, including jobs, schools, transportation, and all public and private businesses open to the general public. -
Motor Voter Act
National Voting Rights Act allowed individuals to register to vote when getting a driver's license or at other government agencies, making it easier to register to vote, which allowed more people to vote. -
Lawrence v. Texas
In 2003, the Court overturned a Texas anti-sodomy law as a breach of the right to privacy and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court ruled that state laws prohibiting homosexual sodomy are unconstitutional as an infraction of the right to privacy. -
Obergefell v. Hodges
The Court's decision in Obergefell stated that state laws banning recognition of same-sex marriage violated the United States Constitution, limiting state governments' power.