African American History

The United States Supreme Court has been an instrumental American institution in the struggle for freedom and civil rights for African Americans. However, social change is often slow, with advances in civil rights moving ahead in small steps rather than large strides. Two landmark Supreme Court decisions that illustrate this process were handed down nearly six decades apart; Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas (1954).

Plessy v. Ferguson is generally viewed as legitimizing segregation by affirming the "separate but equal" doctrine of race. At issue was the constitutionality of a Louisiana Law that mandated equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored raced on all passenger railways in the state. Homer Plessy was forced, by railway agents and police officials, to give up a purchased seat in a railway car designated for whites only. A majority of seven justices upheld the constitutionality of the law in Plessy v. Ferguson, enacting what Lofgren (1987) calls a "reasonable police measure to secure order" (3).

The decision in Plessy v. Ferguson was a genuine reflection of prevailing cultural, ethical, and social norms and more which characterized post-Reconstruction and post-Civil War United States political life. According to Swisher (1960), Plessy was handed down in an era in this country's history less than a third of a century after the Civil War, when many people remained "convinced t

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hts, finally winning the battle with the passage of the Civil Rights Act ten years later. GROUP E The era of Reconstruction and the creation of the Freedmen's Bureau were part of an ongoing effort to bring stability and development to the South, efforts allegedly aimed at improving life for African Americans. Reconstruction was a period of rebuilding. The end of the Civil War left the American government with a host of issues that needed resolved. Such issues included the nature of the relationship between the Southern states and the Union and the status and welfare of the recently-freed slaves. As White (1977) maintains, the Civil War and ensuing Reconstruction both involved momentous and fundamental issues: the status of the Negro, the rights of states and their relationship to the federal government, the limits and responsibilities of Presidential and Congressional power, and the conditions of peace which the victors should impose upon the vanquished (v). Reconstruction caused enormous controversy among radical Republican, Negroes, Northern carpet-baggers, Southern scalawags, Southern whites and U.S. presidents. Reconstruction encompassed the pernicious effects of racism that underlie the entire process. Universal su

Category: History - A