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Dred Scott v. Sandford
in 1857, the United States Supreme Court issues a decision in the Dred Scott case, affirming the right of slave owners to take their slaves into the Western territories, thereby negating the doctrine of popular sovereignty and severely undermining the platform of the newly created Republican Party. -
13th Ammendment
this Amendment to the Constitution outlawed slavery. -
14th Amendment
the amendment was passed and gave blacks the right of citizenship in America. -
15th Amendment
gave Congress the power to enforce such rights against governments that sought to undermine this guarantee through the enactment of appropriate legislation. -
19th Amendment
The right of suffrage for woman. -
Brown v. Board of Education
a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896, which allowed state-sponsored segregation, so far as it applied to public education. -
Affirmative Action
refers to policies that take factors including "race, color, religion, sex, or national origin" into consideration in order to benefit of an underrepresented group "in areas of employment, education, and business". -
24th Amendment
prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
An Act to enforce the constitutional right to vote, to confer jurisdiction upon the district courts of the United States to provide injunctive relief against discrimination in public accommodations, to authorize the Attorney General to institute suits to protect constitutional rights in public facilities and public education, to extend the Commission on Civil Rights, to prevent discrimination in federally assisted programs, to establish a Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity, and for oth -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
prohibits the states and their political subdivisions from imposing voting qualifications or prerequisites to voting, or standards, practices, or procedures that deny or curtail the right of a U.S. citizen to vote because of race, color, or membership in a language minority group. -
Poll Taxes
A tax levied on every adult, without reference to income or resources -
White Primaries
Southern states began using the white primary as a way of limiting the ability of African Americans to play a part in the political process. -
Reed v. Reed
An Equal Protection case in the United States in which the Supreme Court ruled that the administrators of estates cannot be named in a way that discriminates between sexes. -
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
A landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States. It upheld affirmative action, allowing race to be one of several factors in college admissions. The specific program challenged, that of the University of California, Davis School of Medicine, set aside 16 out of 100 seats for minority students. -
Equal Rights Amendment
Guarunteed equal rights for women. -
Bowers v. Hardwick
A United States Supreme Court decision, overturned in 2003, that upheld, in a 5-4 ruling, the constitutionality of a Georgia sodomy law criminalizing oral and anal sex in private between consenting adults when applied to homosexuals. -
Americans with Disabilities Act
Prohibits, under certain circumstances, discrimination based on disability. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
A landmark United States Supreme Court decision in the jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal". -
Lawrence v. Texas
A landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court. In the 6–3 ruling, the Court struck down the sodomy law in Texas and, by extension, invalidated sodomy laws in thirteen other states, making same-sex sexual activity legal in every U.S. state and territory. The Court overturned its previous ruling on the same issue in the 1986 case Bowers v. Hardwick, where it upheld a challenged Georgia statute and did not find a constitutional protection of sexual privacy. -
Fisher v. University of Texas
A United States Supreme Court case concerning the affirmative action admissions policy of the University of Texas at Austin.
