Civilrights

Civil Rights Timeline

By engineer45654

  • Yick Wo v Hopkins

    The Court ruled for the first time that a facially neutral law applied in a racially discriminatory manner violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

  • Plessy v Ferguson

    The court upheld a Louisiana law requiring restaurants, hotels, hospitals, and other public places to serve African Americans in separate, but ostensibly equal, accommodations.

  • Powell v Alabama

    The Supreme Court overturned the convictions of the “Scottsboro boys,” and set a precedent that the right to counsel is required for death penalty cases under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process clause, whether in federal or state courts.

  • Missouri Ex Rel Gaines v Canada

    The Supreme Court ruled that Missouri could not satisfy its obligation to provide equal protection by sending an African American resident to an out-of-state law school

  • Shelley v Kraemer

    The court ruled that judicial enforcement of a racially restrictive property covenant is a violation of the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

  • McLaurin v Oklahoma

    Reversed a lower court decision upholding the efforts of the state-supported University of Oklahoma to adhere to the state law requiring African-Americans to be provided graduate or professional education on a segregated basis.

  • Sweatt v Painter

    Successfully challenged the "separate but equal" doctrine of racial segregation established by the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson.

  • Brown v Board of Education

    Case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional.

  • Rosa Parks Case

    The Supreme Court, without comment, affirmed a lower court ruling declaring segregation of the Montgomery bus system illegal, giving a major victory to Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the thousands of anonymous African Americans who had sustained the bus boycott in the face of violence and intimidation.

  • Cooper v Aaron

    Held that the states are bound by the Court's decisions and must enforce them even if the states disagreed with them.