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STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC. v. PRESIDENT 
AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE 
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

1860–1880, p. 638 (1935); see J. Anderson, The Education 
of Blacks in the South 1860–1935, p. 7 (1988).  Black Amer-
icans  thus  insisted,  in  the  words  of  Frederick  Douglass,
“that in a country governed by the people, like ours, educa-
tion of the youth of all classes is vital to its welfare, pros-
perity, and to its existence.”  Address to the People of the 
United States (1883), in 4 P. Foner, The Life and Writings
of Frederick Douglass 386 (1955).  Black people’s yearning
for freedom of thought, and for a more perfect Union with
educational opportunity for all, played a crucial role during
the Reconstruction era. 

Yet emancipation marked the beginning, not the end, of 
that era.  Abolition alone could not repair centuries of racial
subjugation.  Following the Thirteenth Amendment’s rati-
fication, the Southern States replaced slavery with “a sys-
tem  of  ‘laws  which  imposed  upon  [Black  people]  onerous 
disabilities and  burdens,  and  curtailed  their rights  in  the
pursuit of life, liberty, and property to such an extent that
their freedom was of little value.’ ”  Regents of Univ. of Cal. 
v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265, 390 (1978) (opinion of Marshall, J.) 
(quoting  Slaughter-House  Cases,  16  Wall.  36,  70  (1873)). 
Those so-called “Black Codes” discriminated against Black 
people on the basis of race, regardless of whether they had 
been previously enslaved.  See, e.g., 1866 N. C. Sess. Laws 
pp. 99, 102.

Moreover,  the  criminal  punishment  exception  in  the 
Thirteenth  Amendment  facilitated  the  creation  of  a  new 
system  of  forced  labor  in  the  South.    Southern  States  ex-
panded their criminal laws, which in turn “permitted invol-
untary servitude as a punishment” for convicted Black per-
sons.  D.  Blackmon,  Slavery  by  Another  Name:  The  Re-
Enslavement  of  Black  Americans  From  the  Civil  War  to 
World War II, pp. 7, 53 (2009) (Slavery by Another Name). 
States required, for example, that Black people “sign a la-
bor contract to work for a white employer or face prosecu-
tion  for  vagrancy.”  The  Second  Founding  48.    State  laws