AN ANALYSIS OF THE PROGRESSION OF THE EARLY CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT:

WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE CONDITION AND LEGAL RIGHTS OF AFRICAN AMERICANS THROUGH U.S. SUPREME COURT CASES FROM 1849 TO 1974

America holds itself to be a pillar of democracy and freedom, offering equality to all individuals. This essay questions that belief.

The American Civil war (1861-1865) ended slavery in the South, but by no means gave African Americans the same equal rights and privileges as white males. The struggle for equality under the law continued for more than a century after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, freeing all slaves. Over the years, several cases came before the US Supreme Court that addressed the constitutionality of laws put in place to segregate the races. The oppression of the African American people after Reconstruction was mainly through legalized racism, known as Jim Crow laws. The constitutionality of these laws was reviewed and questioned in the Supreme Court.

It is interesting to see how as the times changed and progressed, the opinions and rulings of the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of certain laws changed as well. The general vie

In this sense, one may be able to say that the rights of Negroes were considerably better during Reconstruction (1866-1877), immediately after the Civil War than they would be for the next fifty or so years to come. The road to integration has by no means been a steady progression towards the goal. Since the emancipation of the slaves, one now sees that that was just the beginning of the fight for equality. There have been leaps backward, with the introduction of black codes, and small victories when one of these laws was stricken down. The process of erasing these racist laws would take another century of fighting in the courts; for instance, in the 1970¯s there still were some segregated schools in the South.

Harlan compares this majority verdict to the case of Dred Scott in 1857 which declared Blacks could not be considered citizens of the USA. Dred Scott was later overturned. Harlan states that the discrimination towards African Americans is a badge of servitude, unjustifiable before the law. He concludes by stating that °the thin disguise of cequal¯ accommodations ['] will not mislead anyone, nor atone for the wrong this day done±.

Over the next twenty years after Brown was decided, racial laws were eradicated by the implementation of several Acts to protect the Civil Rights of all races. While legalized segregation and discrimination were being abolished, racism and hate towards African Americans intensified. With the victory of required integration in 1954, another period if violent protest arose in the South. In a way the verdict added fuel for the extreme segregationists, the Ku Klux Klan resurfaced in force for the first time since the years immediately after Reconstruction.

Roberts v. The City of Boston (1849) was one of the first desegregation cases, occurring before the Civil War. Roberts wanted to enroll his daughter in the nearest school to his home, which was a whites-only school in the neighborhood, instead of having his child go to the school for Blacks one mile away. This case was referred to in the Plessy v. Ferguson case, but should not have been relied on since at the time the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments were not yet made. In Roberts v. City of Boston it was decided that the girl, Sara, was not denied access to education, and therefore was not °unlawfully excluded from public school instruction±. Justice Shaw, delivering the opinion of the court gives a verdict similar to the cseparate but equal¯ doctrine established in Plessy V. Ferguson. Shaw also writes that segregation is a natural social tendency, and that °This prejudice, if it exists, is not created by law, and probably cannot be changed by law± - an argument that would resurface when explaining the Plessy verdict. Although this case upheld segregation, the city of Boston made integration the law the following year.

Although the doctrine of separate but equal was not constitutional, for the most part, facilities and accommodations were far from equal. Separate yes, equal no. Schools for Black children in the South were °substandard due to the overcrowding, lack of supplies, poorly constructed schoolhouses and poorly trained teachers.± For example, in a small town in the mid 1950¯s, the school designated for Blacks was four times as crowded as the white high school, yet had only half the number of teachers. Sometimes separate facilities for people of color did not even exist. For example in the 1938 case of Missouri ex rel . Gaines v. Canada, where Lloyd Gaines was denied admission to a law school in his state because he was Black and the University O Missouri School Of Law was for whites only. The state offered to pay his tuition in the neighboring state school, but he refused the offer, claiming it was his constitutional right to attend a school in his home state. The case ruling was a victory for civil rights activists despite the fact that the University Of Missouri School Of Law did not integrate, but a new graduate sch

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Approximate Word count = 3846
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page double spaced)