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Civil Rights Timeline
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Dred Scott v. Sandford
A supreme court case where Dred Scott a slave was taken into free U.S. territory by his owner. Once he returned to his home state of Missouri he sued his owner, claiming that since he was taken to free U.S. territory he was now a free citizen. The case made it to the supreme court and they ruled that the constitution does not apply to people of African Descent regardless of if they are free or enslaved. -
13th Amendment
This is an amendment that was issued at the end of the Civil War and it followed the Emancipation Proclamation in Lincoln and his party's goal to end slavery. It states that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. It was essentially the piece of legislation that officially brought slavery to an end in the United States. -
14th Amendment
This is an amendment that came post-civil war era, during the era of Reconstruction in an effort to abolish slavery and clearly define citizenship in the U.S. It granted citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the United States, including former enslaved people, and guaranteed all citizens, equal protection of the laws. -
Poll Taxes
These developed in the post-Reconstruction south, with the attempt to disenfranchise black voters. It is essentially a fixed amount per person levied on adults once thy were about to vote in a national election. It was later abolished by the ratification of the 24th Amendment. -
White Primaries
This is another attempt to prevent African-Americans from participating in the democracy by blocking their right to vote. White primaries were primary elections held in the Southern United States in which only white voters were permitted to participate. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
This is a case that attempted to challenge the constitutionality of the Jim Crow laws established all across the south. It is a case where the supreme court held that state mandated segregation laws did not violate the equal protection clause of the fourteenth Amendment. The courts "separate but equal" decision became the legal basis for racial segregation in the United States. -
19th Amendment
This is an amendment passed as a response to the equal rights movement prominent in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It legally guarantees American women the right to vote. This milestone became widely celebrated due to the lengthy and difficult struggle involving decades of agitation and protest it took to achieve it. -
Equal Rights Amendment
It is known by most as the ERA, which is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution designed to guarantee equal rights to American citizens regardless of sex. Its proponents asserted it would end legal distinctions between men and women in matters of divorce, property, employment, and other matters. -
Brown v. Board of Education
This was a landmark supreme court case that challenged the "separate but equal" decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. In this case the justices unanimously ruled that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. It became one of the cornerstones of the civil rights movement and help established the precedent that racial segregation in public service is, in fact, not equal at all. -
24th Amendment
This Amendment was in response the trend of poll tax as a voting requirement in federal elections. It gives citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied by the U.S. or any state to vote for failure to pay any poll tax. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
This was a public law that came as a response to the civil rights movement growing across the nation during the 1950s and 1960s. It is a public law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, this also applied when hiring, promoting or firing people as workers. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
This is also a piece of legislation in response to the civil rights movement, but this specifically targeted the discrimination in voting rights that were present especially in the south. This act was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson, it outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting. -
Affrimative Action
It is also known as positive discrimination, which involves sets of policies and practices within a government or organization seeking to include particular groups based on their race, sexuality, creed or nationality in areas where groups are underrepresented like education and employment. It is basically a set of procedures aiming to eliminate unlawful discrimination among applicants in the workplace. -
Reed v. Reed
This was a landmark case that was related to the Equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The supreme court held that administrators of estates cannot be named n a way that discriminates between the sexes. -
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
This is supreme court case related to the civil rights movement focusing specifically on University admissions that held that a university's admissions criteria which use race as a definite and exclusive basis for an admission decision violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment -
Bowers v. Hardwick
It involved Michael Hardwick being observed by a Georgia police officer while engaging in the act of consensual homosexual sodomy with another adult in his bedroom. It went to the supreme court case, which held that there was no constitutional protection for sodomy (sexual intercourse involving anal or oral copulation). The decision found that the 14th Amendment does not prevent a state from criminalizing private sexual conduct involving same-sex couples. Later overruled by Lawrence v. Texas -
Americans with Disabilities Act
This is part of the push for equality for all types of American citizens, with this act particularly focusing on equal accessibility. It is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life, including jobs, schools, transportation, and all public and private places that are open to the general public -
Motor Voter Act
It is also known as the National Voting Rights Act. This act specifically allows individuals to register to vote when getting driver's license or at other government agencies. -
Lawrence v. Texas
This is a supreme court case that overturned the decision in Bowers v. Hardwick. It was a landmark case in which the court held that most sanctions or criminal punishment for consensual, adult non-procreative sexual activity(sodomy laws) are unconstitutional. They based their decision on the inherent right to privacy that every American citizen enjoys. -
Obergefell v. Hodges
It was a supreme court case that held that Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment guarantees the right to marry as a fundamental liberty it protect, and that it applies to same-sex couples in the same manner as it does to opposite-sex couples. Because of the decision states became required to license and recognize same-sex marriage.