Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_l6gn.pdf
Page Number: 213

Cite as:  600 U. S. ____ (2023) 

5 

JACKSON, J., dissenting 

this  discrimination,  and  crush  to  death  the  hated  freed-
men.”6  And this Court facilitated that retrenchment.7  Not 
just in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537 (1896), but “in al-
most every instance, the Court chose to restrict the scope of 
the second founding.”8  Thus, thirteen years pre-Plessy, in 
the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3 (1883), our predecessors 
on this Court invalidated Congress’s attempt to enforce the 
Reconstruction  Amendments  via  the  Civil  Rights  Act  of
1875,  lecturing  that  “there  must  be  some  stage  . . .  when 
[Black  Americans]  tak[e]  the  rank  of  a  mere  citizen,  and
ceas[e] to be the special favorite of the laws.”  Id., at 25.  But 
Justice Harlan knew better.  He responded: “What the na-
tion, through Congress, has sought to accomplish in refer-
ence  to  [Black  people]  is—what  had  already  been  done  in 
every State of the Union for the white race—to secure and 
protect  rights  belonging  to  them  as  freemen  and  citizens; 
nothing more.”  Id., at 61 (dissenting opinion).

Justice  Harlan  dissented  alone.  And  the  betrayal  that 
this  Court  enabled  had  concrete  effects.  Enslaved  Black 
people had built great wealth, but only for enslavers.9  No 
surprise, then, that freedmen leapt at the chance to control 
their own labor and to build their own financial security.10 
Still, White southerners often “simply refused to sell land 
to blacks,” even when not selling was economically foolish.11 
To bolster private exclusion, States sometimes passed laws 
forbidding  such  sales.12    The  inability  to  build  wealth 

—————— 

6 Speech  Introducing  the  [Fourteenth]  Amendment  (May  8,  1866),  in 

id., at 159; see Du Bois 670–710. 

7 E. Foner, The Second Founding 125–167 (2019) (Foner). 
8 Id., at 128. 
9 M.  Baradaran,  The  Color  of  Money:  Black  Banks  and  the  Racial 

Wealth Gap 9–11 (2017) (Baradaran). 

10 Foner 179; see also Baradaran 15–16; I. Wilkerson, The Warmth of 
Other  Suns:  The  Epic  Story  of  America’s  Great  Migration  37  (2010) 
(Wilkerson).

11 Baradaran 18. 
12 Ibid.