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Dred Scott v. Sanford
Dred Scott, a slave in Missouri, sued for his freedom on"free" territory. The Court ruled against him, saying that under the Constitution, he was his master's property. The signnificance of this is how this creates the spark of equal property for african-americans. -
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supreme courtcases and laws
time span of supreme court cases -
Emancipation Proclamation
President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring "that all persons held as slaves" within the Confederate states "are, and henceforward shall be free." meaning slaves were abolished but segeragation was still in existance. -
Thirteenth amendment
Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, prohibiting slavery. and it states "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." -
Fourteenth Amendment
Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, defining citizenship. Individuals born or naturalized in the United States are American citizens, including those born as slaves. This nullifies the Dred Scott Case (1857), which had ruled that blacks were not citizens. -
The American Woman Suffrage Association
The American Woman Suffrage Association. gained voting rights for women through amendments to individual state constitutions.
The territory of Wyoming passes the first women's suffrage law. women begin serving on juries in the territory. -
Fifteenth Amendment
Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, giving blacks the right to vote.
Hiram Revels of Mississippi is elected the country's first African-American senator. During Reconstruction, sixteen blacks served in Congress and about 600 served in states legislatures. -
women voting
Colorado is the first state to adopt an amendment granting women the right to vote. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
The Court upheld a Louisiana law requiring restaurants, hotels, hospitals, and other public places to serve African Americans in separate, but ostensibly equal. serperate but equal will later lead to the fight for intergration -
Meyer v. Nebraska
In an important precedent for what would become the Latino civil rights movement, the Court struck down a state ban on foreign language instruction in private schools. The law had prohibited all pre-eighth grade foreign language instruction, but the Court said such a ban violated the Fourteenth Amendment. -
Missouri ex el Gaines v. Canada
The Supreme Court ruled that Missouri could not satisfy its obligation to provide equal protection by sending an African American resident to an out-of-state law school and that Lionel Gaines must thus be admitted to the all-white University of Missouri School of Law. This case was the beginning of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's effort to chip away at the separate-but-equal doctrine. -
Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents
The Court struck down segregation of African American students in law and graduate schools. The Justice Department, in its brief to the Court, said it believed Plessy was unconstitutional and should be overturned. -
Brown v. Board II
The Supreme Court held that school systems must abolish their racially dual systems, but could do so "with all deliberate speed." -
Brown v. Board of Education
'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. So therefore segeragated schools were unconstitutional and intergration began. -
intergrated bus system
The Supreme Court, without comment, affirmed a lower court ruling declaring segregation of the Montgomery bus system illegal, giving a major victory to Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the thousands of anonymous African Americans who had sustained the bus boycott in the face of violence and intimidation. -
Cooper v. Aaron
The Supreme Court upheld the rule of law stating that official resistance and community violence could not justify delays in implementing desegregation efforts. -
Equal pay act
A United States federal law amending the Fair Labor Standards Act, aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex.
Congress denounces sex discrimination for the following reasons:
It depresses wages and living standards for employees necessary for their health and efficiency it prevents the maximum utilization of the available labor resources it tends to cause labor disputes, thereby burdening, affecting, and obstructing commerce; -
Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co
The Court held that the Civil Rights Act of 1866 bans racial discrimination in housing by private, as well as governmental, housing providers. -
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education
The Court ruled busing was an appropriate legal tool for addressing illegal segregation of the schools. which gave more power for future cases. -
Griggs v. Duke Power Co
The Supreme Court ruled that the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits not only intentional job discrimination, but also employer practices that have a discriminatory effect on minorities and women. The Court held that tests and other employment practices that disproportionately screened out African American applicants for jobs were prohibited when the tests were not shown to be job-related. -
Milliken II
The Court ordered the state of Michigan, along with the Detroit school system, to finance a plan to address the educational deficits faced by African American children. These deficits, the Court suggested, arose out of enforced segregation and could not be cured by physical desegregation alone. -
City of Mobile v. Bolden,
The Court narrowly interpreted the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It held that, in order to establish a violation, the government must prove that any change in voting practices that harms minorities was actually motivated by discriminatory intent. This holding was legislatively overturned by the 1982 Voting Rights Act Amendments. -
Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education
The Court emphasized that lawful affirmative action programs cannot require that incumbent white workers be discharged to make way for minority workers. The Court held that a public employer may not lay off more senior white workers to protect the jobs of less senior black workers. -
United States v. Paradise
The Court upheld a one-for-one promotion requirement in the Alabama Department of Public Safety, finding it to be narrowly tailored and necessary to eliminate the effects of Alabama's long-term discrimination. Providing more power in the work force.