Term
| Roberts v. City of Boston |
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Definition
• 1849 • Black parents seek black school in response to perceived discrimination against their children • With time Boston schools become segregated • Roberts (father of school age daughter) sues to have his daughter admitted to otherwise white school arguing that black schools are underfunded • Massachusetts state court rules against Roberts • Crandall v. Connecticut (1834) • Precedent relevant to Dred Scott (1857) • Precedent relevant to Plessy decision (1896): is segregation still legal after passage of 14th amendment (1868) • Lofgren reading • Rogers Smith reading |
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Term
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Definition
• First Act in 1793 – gave states the right to demand a slave be returned, and a crime to assist a fugitive or slave in escaping
• Part of Missouris Compromise, 1850 (36/30 line, there can be slavery above but not below it, which later became an issue in Dred Scott)
• If slaves escape to another state, they are obligated to be returned
• Obligation to all states to assist in the return of slaves
• Undermined by underground railroad
• Issue in Ableman v. Booth
• Reading: Archibald Cox, Rogers Smith |
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Term
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Definition
· 1857
· Citizenship
· Slave (Sam, later known as Dred Scott) taken to IL/WI by owner, than returned to MI – tries to establish freedom after owner dies, then brings a suit claiming he was free because he resided in a free state
· Does Dred Scott have the right to raise a claim before the Supreme Court?
· Court: No
o Taney (conservative slave owner)
o Blacks by definition are not citizens according to the constitution
o Dred Scott could not be free by virtue of the Missouri Compromise because that would be depriving slaveholders of their property without due process of the law, which is in violation of the 5th Amendment
o The rights to own slaves cannot be restricted to the slave states
· Overturns previous compromises
· Puts US on path to Civil War
· Reading: Archibald Cox, “One Nation Indivisible”, Rogers Smith
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Term
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Definition
• 1859
• Helps to accelerate onset of Civil War
• Conflict between Underground Railroad and Fugitive Slave Act
• Premise:
o Joshua Glover, slave, escapes to Racine from Missouri, is betrayed and held in jail in Milwaukee for return to owners
o Mob of abolitionists led by Sherman Booth break down jail door and free Glover
o Booth arrested on charges of violating the Fugitive Slave Act
• Question: what do we do with white citizens helping slaves escape?
• Ruling:
o Goes against the law and they should be prosecuted
o States don’t have power to interfere with the detention of a person held by order of a federal court
• Dual Citizenship
• Reading: Archibald Cox, “One Nation Indivisible” |
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Term
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Definition
• 1868
• Complete incorporation of Bill of Rights – allows fed govt. to enforce in states, abridging of state rights
• End of dual citizenship
• Clauses:
o All persons born or naturalized in the US and subject to jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the US and of the state in which they reside
o No state shall make or enforce any law which abridges the privileges and immunities of the citizens of the US
o Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law
o Nor shall any State…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws (equal protection clause)
• Plessy v. ferguson
• Reading: Michael Kent Curtis, “No State Shall Abridge”
• Reading: Archibald Cox, “One Nation Indivisible” |
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Term
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Definition
• Refers to the fact that the Bill of Rights restricts what the US (fed govt.) can do to its citizens, but the states don’t need to follow it because they are only restricted by state constitutions
• State citizenship and US citizenship
• Dred Scott – Taney rules that blacks are citizens of states, but not the US
• So everyone is effected by two different constitutions
• Ended by 14th Amendment, 1866
• Reading: Michael Kent Curtis, “No State Shall Abridge”, Rogers Smith |
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Term
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Definition
• Used to settle disputed 1876 election
• Southern democrats agree to recognize republican as president (Rutherdorfd B. Hayes) and recognize black rights, in exchange for govt. taking troops out of southern states and a democratically controlled house and agenda |
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Term
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Definition
• Tax that requires people to pay for right to vote
• Not directly tied to race, but stops impoverished blacks from voting
• Georgia first to initiate, other southern states followed
• Related to literacy test
• Way of disenfranchising poor blacks and native Americans, as well as poor whites
• Way of getting around the 15th Amendment
• Often included a Grandfather clause – didn’t have to pay if your father or grandfather had voted in the pre-abolition years |
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Term
| Civil Rights Cases of 1883 |
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Definition
• 5 similar cases consolidated into one issue for US Supreme Court
• Cases: African-Americans had sued theaters, hotels and transit companies that had refused to admitthem or excluded them from white only facilities
• Ruling: the language of the 14th Amendment did not give congress power to regulate private acts
o The 13th Amendement does apply to private actors, but only to the extend that it prohibits people from owning slaves, not exhibiting discriminatory behavior
• Ushered in Jim Crow laws |
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Term
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Definition
• 1892
• Premise:
o Louisiana passes the “Separate Car Act” that requires separate accommodations for whites/blacks on railroads
o Plessy, an “octoroon,” buys a first class ticket and boards a whites only car on June 7, 1892 and is arrested
o Plessy argues that his arrest violates the 13th and 14th Amendments; John Ferguson ruled that Louisiana had the right to regulate railroad companies as long as they operated within state boundaries.
• Ends up appealing to Supreme Court of Louisiana, and then US Supreme Court in 1896
• Ruling:
o Court denies Plessy’s arguments, seeing no way in which Louisiana violates the 14th
o Contended that the law separated the races as a matter of public policy – does not imply inferiority of blacks
• Reading: Charles LoFaren |
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Term
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Definition
• Segregation through legislation (versus de facto, which is through practice)
• Reading: Charles LoForen
o Southern transportation was not rigidly segregated during the quarter-century after the Civil War, in the 1870s and 1880s
o Only later did states start instituting legislation |
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Term
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Definition
• 1915
• One of US’s earliest feature length movies
• Yellow peril
• Naturalization act of 1790
• Orientalism – establishes authority over the Other through knowledge of and access to the Other’s language, history and culture as a privilege of the colonial agent
• Fu Manchu – Asian villain in comic series, came out similar time as The Cheat
• Themes: miscegenation between Asian man and a white women, crisis of consumption, emergence of the leissure class, domestic crises
• Collapses Asian national/ethnic identities into a single, collapsed, racialized Oriental identity
• Reading: Robert G. Lee, “Asian Americans in Popular Culture” |
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Term
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Definition
• 1922
• Reversed former immigration laws that said a woman lost her US citizenship if she married a foreign man, because she assumed the citizenship of her husband
• Excluded Asians – only applied to aliens who were eligible for naturalization
• If a woman married a foreigner and lived outside the US for more than 2 years, could lose citizenship |
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Term
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Definition
• Takao Ozawa
o born in Japan in 1875, moved to CA in 1894
o Educated at UC Berkely
o Settled in Hawai
• Court Case
o Applied for naturalization in 1914
o Asserted that his skin was white
o Court: skin color does not correlate well with identity
o If skin color can’t be relied upon to indicate race, can any physical feature serve this purpose?
o Court: white = Caucasian, and Ozawa is not Caucasian
• Naturalization act of 1790
• Precedent for United States v. Thind
• Internment camps
• Reading: Ian Haney-Lopez, “Ozawa and Thind” |
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Term
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Definition
• 1931
• Fight between 9 blacks and group of whites on train
• Blacks arrested for raping young white women – sentenced to death
o Found that the boys had been denied effective council and thus the verdicts were overturned by the supreme court.
o Women were lying, not actually raped
• Powell v. Alabama (1932) – boys did not receive adequate council
• Norns v. Alabama (1935) – jury practices in Alabama unconstitutional, because all white juries
• Popular rallying issue for artists
• Communist party provides support for boys |
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Term
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Definition
• 1943
• Partially reaction to Sleepy Lagoon (1942), which leads to People v. Zammora (1944)
• Zoot suits – controversial, seen as unpatriotic, dangerous
• Military men attack Mexican, Phillipino, Black youth wearing zoot suits
• Police watch, crowds cheer
• Ban against wearing zoot suits instituted |
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Term
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Definition
• 1943
• Partially reaction to Sleepy Lagoon (1942), which leads to People v. Zammora (1944)
• Zoot suits – controversial, seen as unpatriotic, dangerous
• Military men attack Mexican, Phillipino, Black youth wearing zoot suits
• Police watch, crowds cheer
• Ban against wearing zoot suits instituted |
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Term
| Hirabayashi v. United States |
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Definition
• 1943
• Exec order 9066, 9102
• Refused to register for the evacuation and he challenged the curfew
• Is it constitutional to single out a group for evacuation/curfew based on race/ethnicity? Court rules yes
• Doctine of judicial notice
o Strict scrutiny
o DeWitt evidence of disloyalty
o Lack of time
• Found that curfews against a minority group were constitutional if the nation was at war with that country
• Precedent for Yasui v. US, Korematsu v. US |
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Term
| Korematsu v. United States |
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Definition
• 1944
• From California, 23 yr old welder. Plastic surgery on his eyes so that he didn’t appear Asian. Basically a case against the constitutionality of the internment camps in America.
• Exec order 9066, 9102
• Order is constitutional because nation iss under attack, national protection/security more important than individual basic human rights.
• Doctine of judicial notice
o Strict scrutiny
o DeWitt evidence of disloyalty
o Lack of time
• Corum nobis much later
• Strict scrutiny
• Precedents: Hirabayashi v. US, Yasui v. US |
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Term
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Definition
• Absent cause or reason, the government should never treat any group different than others.
• Need a very strong reason to single out a certain group of people
• Hirabayashi v. US, Korematsu v. US, Yasui v. US
o Testimony of evidence of disloyalty from Japanese Americans and lack of time
• All other asian exclusion cases |
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Term
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Definition
• Absent cause or reason, the government should never treat any group different than others.
• Need a very strong reason to single out a certain group of people
• Hirabayashi v. US, Korematsu v. US, Yasui v. US
o Testimony of evidence of disloyalty from Japanese Americans and lack of time
• All other asian exclusion cases |
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Term
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Definition
• “which [things] in your presence” – ‘things’ refer to the records of the original case.
• A writ that the courts can use to correct a previously incorrect ruling when there is no other possible remedy.
• Someone who has been convicted and has served the sentence…and they have not other way to go about it.
• Internment cases |
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Term
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Definition
• The denial of racism against asian Americans – “you have nothing to complain about”
• Term comes from a musical based on a doomed romance between an asian woman and an American woman that was going to be put on in 1990
• In the original production, the woman should have been an asian actress, but instead, they cast a white woman, and Asian community objected
• “Model minority”
• Minority blaming function – they made it, why can’t you? Why should we give assistance to you when other non-white minorities are succeeding? |
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Term
| Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas |
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Definition
• 1954
• Precedents: Sweatt v. Painter 1950, McLauren v. Oklahoma State Regents
• Fred Vinson originally hoping for 5-4 ruling to uphold Plessy – judicial self restraint
• Vinson dies and replaced by Earl Warren (very liberal, and activist)
• Warren overturns Plessy in 9-0 ruling
o Evidence now available that wasn’t in 1896 – psych data
o Separate but equal impractical – has negative effect on hearts/minds of minority groups |
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Term
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Definition
• 1955
• Precedent: Brown v. Board of Education
• How quickly does the court expect districts to institutionalize Brown decision AKA desegregate?
• “With all deliberate speed”
o Interpreted and understood as states can take their time |
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Term
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Definition
• Gerald Rosenberg, Hollow Hope
• For groups that are experiencing marginalization in the 10th Century, best stratedy to pursue is in the courts, rather than focusing on legislative or executive branches
• Courts are most open, vulnerable, accessible
• Support for thesis: to large extent, date the beginning of the civil rights movement to Brown decision
• Symbolic power of court decision |
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Term
| the constrained court thesis |
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Definition
• Gerald Rosenberg, Hollow Hope – believes this thesis
• The court’s accessibility means that it is also the weakest of the branches – least likely to bring about longterm, substantive change
• Support for thesis: 10 year gap between Brown decision and implementation
• It’s the legislative and executive branches getting involved that leads to actual change |
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