African American Political History In the United States, the so-called J

In the United States, the so-called Jim Crow laws (also known as the Black Codes) were made to enforce racial segregation and included laws that would prevent African Americans from doing things a white person could do (Jim, 2005). Jim Crow laws regulated the use of drinking fountains, segregated seating on public transportation, and varied among different communities throughout the United States. The first such law was passed in 1723 to stop blacks in Virginia from voting or owning property. After the American Civil War, during the Reconstruction period, the federal government intervened to protect the rights conferred on blacks by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1875.

In 1883, the Supreme Court had held that the 14th Amendment did not give the federal government the power to outlaw private discrimination, and held in 1896 in Plessy vs. Ferguson that Jim Crow laws were constitutional as long as they allowed for separate but equal facilities (Jim, 2005). The Supreme Court began to overturn Jim Crow laws when it held in Guinn vs. United States in 1915 that an Oklahoma state law that denied the right to vote to some citizens was unconstitutional, invalidating the 15th Amendment voter registration requirements containing the 'father clause' which made voter registration in part dependent upon whether the applicant was descended from men enfranchised before enactment of the 15th Amendment (Introduction, 2005).

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as promptly dismissed by the court under Janet Reno, saying there was no racial prejudice shown in the redistricting of the Eastern District of North Carolina (Supreme, 1993). These few cases serve to illustrate the progress of African Americans through the legal system of the United States, from having no rights, to having some rights, to having some of their rights again restricted, the back-and-forth progress shown through the different administrations running the country and the appointing of justices of different persuasions to the courts by different administrations, as well as the changing tenor in the nation towards discriminatory practices . Question 2 During Reconstruction there were a number of black Congressmen, not all of them former slaves (Bailey, 2004). Nine were freeborn: Richard Harvey Cain, Robert Brown Elliott, John Mercer Langston, Thomas Ezekiel Miller, Charles Edmund Nash, James Edward O'Hara, Alonzo Jacob Ransier, James Thomas Rapier, and Hiram Rhodes Revels. Several had military experience before taking public office, Robert Carlos de Large and Robert Smalls serving with the Confederate Navy, Josiah Thomas Walls serving in the Confederate Army, Elliott in the British Royal Navy, John Roy Lynch in th

Category: History - A