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13th Ammendment
The 13th amendment, which formally abolished slavery in the United States, passed the Senate on April 8, 1864, and the House on January 31, 1865. On February 1, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln approved the Joint Resolution of Congress submitting the proposed amendment to the state legislatures. The necessary number of states ratified it by December 6, 1865. The 13th amendment to the United States Constitution provides that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for cr -
14th Ammendment
The 14th amendment to the US Constitution was ratified on July 9, 1868 during the Reconstruction era. It, along with the 13th and 15th amendments are collectively known as the Reconstruction amendments. However, of those three, the 14th is the most complicated and the one that has had the more unforeseen effects. Its broad goal was to ensure that the Civil Rights Act passed in 1866 would remain valid ensuring that "all persons born in the United States...excluding Indians not taxed...." were cit -
15th Ammendment
The 15th Amendment to the Constitution granted African American men the right to vote by declaring that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Although ratified on February 3, 1870, the promise of the 15th Amendment would not be fully realized for almost a century. Through the use of poll taxes, literacy tests and other means, Southern states were able -
Plessey v. Ferguson
In 1890 the Louisiana Legislature passed the Separate Car Act, which required railroads "to provide equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races" in order to protect the safety and comfort of all passengers. In 1891 in New Orleans, a group of African-American and Creole doctors, lawyers, and businessmen formed the "Citizens Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law." The committee chose Homer Plessy, who was one-eighth black, to test the law by violatin -
Mendez v. Westminster
Gonzalo Mendez was born in Mexico in 1913. Mendez, his mother, and her other four children moved to Westminster, California, in 1919. In 1943, at age 30, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States and was a relatively well-off vegetable farmer. By this time, Mendez and his wife had three children who grew up speaking English as well as Spanish, and in fact, the family spoke more English than they did Spanish when at home. In the neighborhood where the Mendez family lived, there was onl -
Delgado v. Bastrop ISD
n 1930 in Salvatierra v. Del Rio Independent School District, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) filed suit in a Texas district court on behalf of the parents of Mexican American children attending public school in Del Rio, Texas. The school district sold a municipal bond to allow the district to add some rooms and an auditorium to an elementary school attended only by Mexican American children in grades one through three. The Mexican American parents believed that the district -
Sweatt v. Painter
In 1946, Heman Sweatt, a 33-year-old African-American mail carrier from Houston, Texas, who wanted to be a lawyer appeared on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. He presented the President of the University, Theophilus Painter, with a copy of his undergraduate transcript from Wiley College and formally applied for admission to the University's Law School. He asserted that he had a right to the same legal training as any other Texan who was a college graduate and that since Texas did -
Brown v. Board of Education
A Kansas law permitted cities with populations of more than 15,000 to maintain separate public schools for African American and white students. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, maintained segregated elementary schools, but other schools in the district were not segregated. Linda Brown, an African American third grader, and her family lived in Topeka, and there was an elementary school just five blocks from their home. However, that school was reserved for white children only, and Linda -
Hernandez v. Texas
In 1951, Pete Hernandez, a 21-year-old, single, Mexican-American cotton picker, was drinking with a friend at a bar in Edna, a small town in Jackson County, Texas, when he became disruptive and was removed from the bar. Pete went home, obtained a gun, returned, and shot Joe Espinosa. In September 1951, he was indicted for murder. Prior to trial, Hernandez’s lawyers moved to quash the indictment and the jury panel. They argued that persons of Mexican descent had been systematically excluded from -
Civil Rights Act 1957
The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was passed in order to ensure that all
Americans could exercise their right to vote. It was the first civil
rights legislation passed since Reconstruction. It sought to address
practices such as the administration of literacy tests and poll taxes
that had effectively disenfranchised many African Americans living in
the South. Its enactment also came after African Americans were
increasingly targeted with violence following the U.S. Supreme
Court’s Brown v. Board of E -
Civil Rights Act 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement. First proposed by President John F. Kennedy, it survived strong opposition from southern members of Congress and was then signed into law by Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. In subsequent years, Congress expanded the act and also pas -
24th Amendment
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement. First proposed by President John F. Kennedy, it survived strong opposition from southern members of Congress and was then signed into law by Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. In subsequent years, Congress expanded the act and also pas -
Voting Rights Act 1965
This “act to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution” was signed into law 95 years after the amendment was ratified. In those years, African Americans in the South faced tremendous obstacles to voting, including poll taxes, literacy tests, and other bureaucratic restrictions to deny them the right to vote. They also risked harassment, intimidation, economic reprisals, and physical violence when they tried to register or vote. As a result, very few African Americans were registered vo -
Edgewood v. Kirby
In 1968, Demetrio Rodriguez and other parents of Mexican American students in the Edgewood Independent School District of San Antonio, Texas, filed a class action suit in U.S. District Court challenging Texas’ public school finance system. Under the Texas system, the state appropriated funds to provide each child with a minimum education. Each local school district then enriched that basic education with funds derived from locally levied ad valorem property taxes. Since the value of taxable prop
