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Dred Scott v. Sandford
"Dred Scott, who had been held as a slave, sued the executor of his former master’s estate under the state-citizenship diversity jurisdiction of the federal courts, seeking a determination that he had become free because his master had voluntarily taken him into free territory" -
Black Codes
Whites dominated governments and restricted the rights of blacks, or former slaves -
Civil Rights Act
all persons born or naturalized in the United States were citizens of the United States and the state in which they lived, thereby affirming a rule of citizenship by birth that did not depend on race -
Anti-Peonage Act of 1867
This Act prohibits peonage, and another federal law, 18 U.S.C. § 1592, which makes it a crime to take somebody’s passport or other official documents for the purpose of holding them as a slave. -
The Civil Rights Cases
the Court held that racial discrimination in private inns, theaters, and public transportation did not qualify as a badge or incident of slavery -
Bailey v. Alabama
When former slaves, or other poor citizens, were unable to repay their debts, they worked off their debt, which made them trapped in a cycle of work-without-pay. The Supreme Court held this practice unconstitutional in 1911. -
Voting Rights Act
The VRA provided a variety of means for the federal government and the federal courts to ensure that the right to vote was not denied on the basis of race. -
Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections
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Dunn v. Blumstein
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Burdick v. Takushi
created a two-part test that first requires courts to decide if a burden on the right to vote is “severe” or not -
Rice v. Cayetano
The Supreme Court concluded that a law limiting who could vote based on their ancestry was equivalent to a law that limited the vote based on race and that Hawaii’s law therefore violated the Fifteenth Amendment