Supreme court cases dealing wiht civil rights, Political


		Data Bases
		• Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism?

		Links
		• Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com

		Free Essays
		• Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers

Search Lots of Essays

Back to Subjects - Political Science

Supreme court cases dealing wiht civil rights

Supreme court cases dealing wiht civil rights The landmark, Supreme Court cases of Dred Scott v. Sandford, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas have had a tremendous effect on the struggle for equal rights in America. These marker cases have set the precedent for cases dealing with the issue of civil equality for the last 150 years. In 1846, a slave living in Missouri named Dred Scott, sued for his freedom on the basis that he had lived for a total of seven years in territories that were closed to slavery. Scott’s owner had been an army doctor named John Emerson. Emerson’s position had required him to move several times in a relatively short amount of time. During his time with Emerson, Scott had lived in the state of Illinois, which was free, and the Wisconsin territory which was closed to slavery according to the Missouri compromise. After Emerson’s death in 1843, Scott became the property of Emerson’s wife. Scott’s case had quite a bit of legal precedents. The state of Missouri had freed slaves in cases that were very similar to that of Scott’s. After 16 years the case finally moved up to the Supreme Court. Emerson’s wife had remarried and moved leaving Scott to her brother a Mr. Sandford. The Supreme Court finally heard the case in 1856. However, the case was postponed until the following year. In a seven to nine decision, Chief Justice Roger B. Tawney delivered the courts decision. The courts ruled that no slaves, or their descendents, had ever been and or are US Citizens. Furthermore, the court ruled that Congress could not stop the spread of slavery to the newly emerging states. They went so far as to declare the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional; claiming it violated the 15th Amendment by denying property with out due process. This declaration stripped African Americans of their rights and stated that according to the United States Supreme Court, they were to be considered as livestock and to be treated as such. In doing so, it ignored the fact that free African American men had full voting rights in five of the original states since the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The decision served to reinforce the fears of northerners and abolitionists alike that the south had the intention of spreading the infernal institution of slavery to every corner of the U.S. The ruling had the effect of enlarging the sociopolitical divide between the north and the south and brought the nation closer to civil war. The next critical Supreme Court ruling on the issue of civil rights was in 1892 with the Plessy v. Ferguson case. Homer Adolph Plessy was a shoemaker from the state of Louisiana. Although Plessy was seven eighths white and only one eighth black. According to the law in Louisiana, he was still required to use the facilities designated as “colored”. In an attempt to challenge the law, Plessy, with the support of civil rights activists, bought a ticket for the first class coach on the East Louisiana Rail Road. Plessy boarded and sat down in the first class coach. Just after the train departed the station the conductor confronted Plessy. The conductor asked him if he was black, Plessy told him he was and that he refused to leave the coach. The train was stopped; Plessy was arrested and formally charged at the fifth street police station. Even though the judge that tried the case had previously ruled that separate cars for intrastate railroads were unconstitutional, Plessy still lost the case. Plessy appealed that decision and the case was handed to the Supreme Court of Louisiana. He argued that the separate car act violated the 13th and 14th Amendments of the Constitution. After being found guilty once again the case was then heard by the Supreme Court of the United States. After arguing his case for the third time, a seven person majority found Plessy guilty again. The ruling stated that the separate car act did in no way violate the 13th or 14th amendment. Thus it upheld the lower courts ruling that African Americans could be segregated if the facilities were equal to that of the whites. The courts decision became known as the separate but equal doctrine. After the case, the doctrine was extended to cover all facets of public facilities from restaurants to schools. The decision paved the way for the infamous Jim Crow laws that plagued African Americans living in the south. Justice John Harlan held the one dissenting vote. Harlan, argued that, “The thin disguise of equal accommodations . . . will not mislead anyone.” He warned that it would become the source of much agitation and aggression. In the future Harlan’s warnings would become a reality. The next Supreme Court case of great importance in dealing with issues of civil equality came in 1954 with the case of Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The case began when the Topeka Board of Education refused to allow a black girl named Linda Brown to be enrolled in a white school. The reason her father wished to enroll her was that the black school was over a mile away and involved her having to cross a railroad switchyard on her way to school. The school for white children was only seven blocks away. After being denied, Brown’s father went to the local chapter of the NAACP and with their help promptly filed a suit. It took the court three years to come up with a ruling. At first the court tried to reach a decision on whether the 14th Amendment had desegregated schools in mind. But by the time court made its ruling, the focus had been shifted to whether segregated school gave the same rights and privileges to black children as it did to their white counterparts. In May 1954 Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the courts decision. In a unanimous ruling it declared that, “in the field of public education, the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place,” and that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” This ruling overturned the idea of separate but equal that had come about as a result of the Plessy v. Ferguson decision. While it did not end segregation in other public facilities or give a time line for the complete desegregation of schools, it did mark the beginning of the end for the unjust and repressive Jim Crowe laws. These landmark cases are symbolic of the ups and downs that marked the struggle for equal rights in America. Although these rulings were not always fair or just, they were representative of their time and place in American history, and serve to remind us of how far we have come as a nation and how much further we have to go. Bibliography:

Word Count: 1133