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Citizenships
Before the Civil War, the Supreme Court ruled that African Americans, whether enslaved or free, were not citizens. In this case, Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), the Supreme Court said that an enslaved man could not sue in federal court because African Americans were not U.S. citizens when the Constitution was adopted. The Fourteenth Amendment was a major milestone. Now people of all races (excluding Native Americans) born in the U.S. were citizens and states could not deprive anyone of that. -
The Dawes Act
The Fourteenth Amendment, did not grant citizenship to Native Americans. That came later. In 1887 Congress passed the General Allotment Act, which came to be known as the Dawes Act, because, Henry Dawes. This aimed to give Native Americans all the benefits of land ownership and education. The government would pay for schools where Native Americans could learn how to integrate into mainstream American society, which would lessen the burden of the government to oversee Native American welfare. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
By the late 1800s, about half of the states had adopted Jim Crow laws requiring racial segregation in places like schools, hotels, and public transportation. In the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled that states were allowed to segregate by race so long as the state provided similar facilities to all. The justices said that such segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s requirements about fair laws. -
Brown v. Board of Education
In the 1950s, the schools of Topeka, Kansas, were racially segregated. Linda Carol Brown, an eight-year-old African American, was denied admission to an all-white school near her home and had to attend an all-African American school further from her home. With the help of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Linda’s family sued the Topeka Board of Education. -
Hernandez v. Texas
In 1954 the case was Hernandez v. Texas. Pete Hernandez, a Mexican American, was convicted of murder by an all-white jury. His lawyer appealed the case, saying that a lot of Mexican Americans and Latinos were eligible for jury service in the county where Hernandez was tried but had been systematically barred from jury service for more than 25 years. The Court agreed that the systematic exclusion of Mexican Americans or Latino people on juries defendants such as Hernandez of equal protection. -
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Civil rights
After intense debates and filibustering by some, Congress passed two landmark civil rights and voting rights laws: the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. They prohibited discrimination based on race, gender, religion, and national origin in employment, public accommodations, government services, and voting. The Civil Rights Acts of 1968, 1974, and 1988 expanded these protections to housing discrimination.
