Source: http://www.crf-usa.org/black-history-month/in-the-courts
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 18:36:25+00:00

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As originally written, the U.S. Constitution did little to protect the rights of African Americans. Following the Civil War, however, three amendments were added to the Constitution. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery. The 14th Amendment granted citizenship to everyone born in the United States. It also banned states from limiting citizens’ rights, depriving them of due process of law, or denying “any person ... the equal protection of the laws.” The 15th Amendment prohibited racial discrimination in voting. These amendments offered promises that African Americans would finally achieve equal treatment under the law.
In the latter 19th century, Southern states started adopting “Jim Crow” laws, which established different rules for black and white people. These laws ordered strict racial segregation in all public areas, including hospitals, restaurants, hotels, trains and buses, playgrounds, and even cemeteries. Signs marked “white” and “colored” dominated the South, ensuring that African Americans would be treated as second-class citizens.
In 1892, some Republicans in New Orleans decided to challenge Jim Crow laws with a test case. They enlisted Homer Plessy, a light-skinned African American, to board a railroad train bound for Covington, Louisiana. Refusing to sit in the “colored only” section, Plessy instead sat in the section reserved for whites. Arrested and convicted for this act of defiance, he appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. By an 8–1 vote in Plessy v. Ferguson, the court rejected Plessy’s arguments that the Louisiana Jim Crow law violated his constitutional rights under the 13th and 14th Amendments.
Writing for the majority, Justice Henry Brown held that this law had nothing to do with slavery and therefore it did not violate the 13th Amendment. He also ruled that the14th Amendment was not intended to enforce the social equality of the races in America. He maintained that laws requiring the separation of the races implied no inferiority of either race. They were, he argued, merely passed to protect the common good, not to annoy or oppress anyone. Brown stated that if black people regarded such laws as a badge of inferiority, that was merely their interpretation. He ruled that segregated facilities in public transportation and other areas of life, including education, were constitutionally permissible, as long such facilities were equal. This case created the “separate but equal” doctrine, which lasted until 1954.
Most 20th century historians and legal experts have sided with Harlan. They rejected the “separate but equal” doctrine as deceptive and fraudulent. Public schools and other facilities for African Americans were never equal and were usually extremely inferior.
Their initial efforts brought significant legal success. Known generally as the “graduate school desegregation cases,” these early victories broke down the myth of “separate but equal” facilities for advanced African-American students. In 1936, a federal appeals court ordered the University of Maryland to admit to its law school a black student it had rejected due to his race. The state had no separate facility for blacks. Two years later, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the University of Missouri Law School to admit a black student it had excluded. The state had no separate law school for blacks, but had offered to send the student to an out-of-state school for blacks. The court ruled that this offer did not “remove the discrimination,” which violated the 14th Amendment.
The Second World War put a momentary stop on the graduate school cases. But following the war came its two most significant victories. The first involved a black law student, Herman Sweatt, who was denied admission to the University of Texas Law School because of his race. Responding to Sweatt’s lawsuit, the state of Texas built a separate law school in Austin for black students. It consisted of three small basement rooms in an office building not far from both the state capitol and the whites-only law school of the University of Texas.
After five years of litigation, Sweatt attained his legal victory. In 1950 in Sweatt v. Painter, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ordered his admission to the University of Texas. It rejected the state’s argument that the newly established law school for blacks was even remotely equal to the facilities for white law students.
In 1948 in Shelley v. Kraemer, the court struck down racial restrictive covenants. Common in many parts of the country, these were agreements, often recorded in deeds, that an owner would not sell the land to specified minorities.
Determined to succeed, Marshall pushed ahead. NAACP lawyers worked furiously to present the best possible case. In 1952, Marshall presented the legal argument that resulted in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education. On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court announced its dramatic unanimous decision: Segregation of children in America’s public schools, when authorized or required by state law, violated the U.S. Constitution, specifically the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the law. Chief Justice Earl Warren relied on scientific evidence in concluding that segregated schools promoted feelings of inferiority in black children. Because this reduced their motivation to learn, Warren and his fellow justices determined that segregated educational facilities were inherently unequal.
Following the Supreme Court’s Brown decision, the court continued to strike down legal segregation throughout the 1950s and 1960s. In a series of short opinions, the court outlawed segregation in buses, parks, public golf courses, and other places. In each case, the court cited the Brown opinion. It upheld the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 1967 in Loving v. Virginia, the court ruled that states could no longer outlaw people of different races from marrying each other. In that ruling, Chief Justice Warren noted that the Virginia statute, which the court declared invalid, did nothing more than endorse the doctrine of white supremacy. By the end of the 1960s, the court had ended all aspects of legal segregation.
In most circumstances, when a legislature passes a law that classifies people into groups, the law must only pass a simple test: Is the law reasonably related to a legitimate state purpose? (This is the “rational basis” test — the lowest level of scrutiny.) If the law is, then it is valid under the 14th Amendment. For example, a law that bans the sale of alcohol to minors serves a legitimate state interest of protecting the welfare of young people.
But if a law classifies people by gender, the court will examine it more closely. This is the second tier — sometimes known as “intermediate scrutiny.” The test for intermediate scrutiny is more demanding: Is the law substantially related to the achievement of an important government purpose?
If, however, the law classifies people by race or ethnicity, it is highly suspect and must be examined extremely closely. In the court’s terms, such a law merits “strict scrutiny,” the highest level of scrutiny. To survive strict scrutiny, a law must pass this test: Is the law necessary to achieve a “compelling state interest”? A compelling state interest is one that is most important and vital to society. Few laws can pass this test.
Although today’s court is more conservative than the Warren Court of the 1950s and ‘60s, there is no possibility of a return to legal segregation. The major expansion of legal rights that Charles Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and many other civil rights lawyers successfully fought for during the 1940s and 1950s will remain intact.
Brook, Thomas. Plessy v. Ferguson. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 1996.
Medley, Keith Walden. We as Freemen: Plessy v. Ferguson. New Orleans: Pelican Publishing. 2003.
Kluger, Richard. Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality. New York: Vintage Books. 2004.

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