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Dred Scott vs. Sandford
Dred Scott was a slave in Missouri. He resided in Illinois (a free state) & in the Louisiana Territory, where slavery was forbidden. After returning to Missouri, Scott went to court for his freedom, claiming that his residence in free territory made him a free man. The Supreme Court ruled that Americans of African descent, whether free or slave, were not American citizens and could not sue in federal court. The Court also ruled that Congress lacked power to ban slavery in the U.S. territories. -
13th Amendment
This amendment abolished slavery. It is said as "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.” -
14th amendment
The 14th amendment states that all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. The 14th amendment is a very important amendment that defines what it means to be a US citizen and protects certain rights of the people. -
15th Amendment
This 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." However, the south found ways to bypass this and African Americans really could not fully vote until the voting act rights in 1965. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
Louisiana enacted the Separate Car Act, which required separate railway cars for blacks and whites. In 1892, Homer Plessy – who was 7/8 Caucasian – agreed to participate in a test to challenge the Act. The railroad cooperated because it thought the Act imposed unnecessary costs via the purchase of additional railroad cars. When Plessy was told to vacate the whites-only car, he was refused and arrested. At trial, Plessy’s lawyers argued that the Separate Car Act violated the 13 & 14th Amendments. -
Poll Taxes
Poll Taxes started in the 1890s as a legal way to keep African Americans from voting in southern states, poll taxes were essentially a voting fee. Eligible voters were required to pay their poll tax before they could cast a ballot. In 1964 the Twenty-Fourth amendment prohibited the use of poll taxes for federal elections. Five states enforced payment of poll taxes for state elections until 1966, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared them unconstitutional. -
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. The black electorate was substantially reduced during this period by requiring prospective voters to pass literacy tests, pay poll taxes, and the like. -
Nineteenth Amendment
The 19th Amendment granted American women the right to vote, a right known as women’s suffrage. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony were two leading women in the movement and it took over 60 years to get this amendment ratified. -
Brown v. Board of Education
Supreme Court decision that overturned the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision (1896); led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Court ruled that "separate but equal" schools for blacks were inherently unequal and thus unconstitutional. The decision sparked the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
This ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, This is considered one of the most important legislative achievements of the civil rights movement and help pass other act such as the voting act of 1965. -
Affirmative Action
Affirmative action is the process of a business or governmental agency in which it gives special rights of hiring or advancement to ethnic minorities to make up for past discrimination against that minority. An Executive Order required government contractors to use affirmative action policies in their hiring to increase the number of minority employees. Colleges and universities began adopting similar policies and over time the enrollment rates for African American and Latino students increased. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
This act was signed into law on August 6, 1965, 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. The Voting Rights Act resulted in a marked decrease in the voter registration disparity between whites and blacks. -
Reed v. Reed
The Idaho Probate Code specified that "males must be preferred to females" in appointing administrators of estates. After the death of their adopted son, both Sally and Cecil Reed sought to be named the administrator of their son's estate (the Reeds were separated). According to the Probate Code, Cecil was appointed administrator and Sally challenged the law in court. In a unanimous decision, the Court held that the law's dissimilar treatment of men and women was unconstitutional. -
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
Allan Bakke applied to U.C. (Davis) Medical School. He had good scores on his admissions test but was rejected in 1973 and 1974. Bakke sued, saying the university discriminated. The court ruled in favor of Allan Bakke saying that racial quotas violated equal protection under the law in the 14th amendment. This set a precedent that racial admission quotas are in violation of the constitution, but race still becomes a factor in the application process. -
24th Amendment
In some states, citizens poll tax. African Americans in the South faced significant discrimination and could not vote for elected officials that would work to end the discrimination. Although the poll tax was never a large sum of money, it was just enough to stop poor African Americans and whites from voting. United States ratified the 24th Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting any poll tax in elections for federal officials. -
Equal Rights Amendment
The proposed Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) states that the rights guaranteed by the Constitution apply equally to all persons regardless of their sex. Alice Paul introduced the ERA in 1923. In 1972, the ERA was finally passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification. The original time limit was extended by Congress to June 30, 1982, but at that deadline, the ERA had been ratified by only 35 states, three states short of the 38 required to put it into the Constitution. -
Bowers v. Hardwick
Michael Hardwick was observed by a Georgia police officer while engaging in the act of consensual homosexual sodomy with another adult in the bedroom of his home. After being charged with violating a Georgia statute that criminalized sodomy, Hardwick challenged the statute's constitutionality in Federal District Court. The divided Court found that there was no constitutional protection for acts of sodomy, and that states could outlaw those practices. -
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
A federal civil rights law designed to prevent discrimination and enable individuals with disabilities to participate fully in all areas of public life, including jobs, schools, transportation, and all public and private places that are open to the general public.The ADA gives civil rights protections to individuals with disabilities similar to those provided to individuals on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, age, and religion. -
Lawrence v. Texas
Lawrence and Garner were arrested and convicted of deviate sexual intercourse in violation of a Texas statute forbidding two persons of the same sex to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct. 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
