...discrimination has increased, Congress decided it was time to make a change so they implemented the Equal Protection Clause. Throughout this essay, I will explain the Equal Protection Clause, where the clause originated from, give example of the clause being applied to cases, and show how the clause is enforced today. The Equal Protection Clause is part of the United States Constitutions 14th amendment. In the Constitution, it states “nor shall any State…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” (Epstein and Walker). Meaning that the State must apply equal application of the law to...
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...How far had civil rights movements made progress between 1945-1950? The period between 1945 and 1955 was regarded as the start of civil rights movements. It has been argued that during this period, civil rights movements had made progress, having an enormous impact, bringing tangible changes to the African-American community. To assess how far the progress had been made, it is important to take into consideration how it affected the Black community in America between 1945-1955. First of all, it is undeniable that during the 1945-155 period, there was a degree of support from the Federal Government. One of the most significant government supports was from Predisent Truman, who made several attempts to call for changes and racial equality to African-American community since he was horrified by attacks on black servicemen from Second World War. In September 1946, he created a civil rights committee with liberal members, whose reports would draw attention to unacceptable situations, to investigate on the racial problems. In October 1947, the committee gave Truman their report, which was entitled as “To Secure These Rights”, saying that the USA could not claim to lead the free world while black were not equal. It advocated eliminating segregation from US life by using federal power, recommending immediate action to remedy existing racial matters. The report was revolutionary in a country where relationship between Whites and Blacks was still tense. To make these recommendations...
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...During this essay I will be explaining and discussing the short and long term significance of all the events take took place between 1957-1959. In the America at this time it was very hard being coloured as you was treated different from the white people. The National Association for the advancement of coloured people (NAACP). They were a black group that demanded civil rights for black people. Its mission is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination; To promote equality of rights and to eradicate caste or race prejudice among the citizens of the United States; to advance the interest of coloured citizens; to secure for them impartial suffrage; and to increase their opportunities for securing justice in the courts, education for the children, employment according to their ability and complete equality before law. Racial segregation is separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, and going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home. The black American people was segregated and this was mostly because they felt that black people was more inferior to the white people. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was a racist anti-Semitic movement; at first the Ku Klux Klan focused its anger and violence on African-Americans, on white Americans...
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...prominent Greek philosopher in 300 BC. He described his version of the social contract in the dialogue, Crito, while debating whether or not he should accept his death sentence. Socrates’ version of the social contract states that one should abide by the laws of the state without exception. If one feels that the state is immoral or unjust, it is his or her duty to persuade the state to act differently. Henry David Thoreau was a philosopher and a transcendentalist in the mid 1800s. He is well known for his essay, “Civil Disobedience,” which he wrote in response to his one-day prison sentence for committing tax evasion. “Civil Disobedience” covers Thoreau’s definition of the social contract. Thoreau claims it is necessary for one to violate the social contract if complying with it defies his or her own moral codes. The social contract can be seen throughout government systems today. The United States government provides for its citizens; examples include equal treatment, free education, and public safety. In return, its citizens must sacrifice some of their freedoms. They must, for example, pay taxes and follow laws, regardless of whether or not they agree with them. However, at times it may be necessary to follow Thoreau’s beliefs and defy the state’s laws if one feels that they are violating their own moral principles. Socrates' interpretation of the social contract can prove to be less advantageous in practice. Thoreau’s method of civil disobedience is the better of the two versions...
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...For most, the history of public school segregation terminates with the unanimous Supreme Court’s watershed ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Though segregation was no longer legally sanctioned, it would take decades of legal struggles and governmental reform to begin to alter the southern status quo. Jack Peltason’s Fifty-Eight Lonely Men: Southern Federal Judges and School Desegregation, first published seven years after the first Brown ruling, offer’s a contemporary point of view into the evolving legal conflict over integration. The opening spares no time delineating the foundations of this struggle. Outside of the eleven Southern States, school boards acquiesced to token integration in line with Brown. However, unrelenting segregationist sentiments overwhelmed Southern moderates. Peltason emphatically explains: “school boards, responsive primarily to white voters, have been unable or unwilling to act. The full burden of forcing compliance,...
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...Mamie Phipps Clark was born Mamie Katherine Phipps. An African-American Psychologist who made a significant impact on developmental psychology. Mamie received distinguished alumni awards from both Howard and Columbia Universities. She also received honorary doctorate degrees from Williams College and the Pratt Institute and a noted fellowship award from the American Association of University Women for her research on the psychological effects of racism and segregation. Her contributions stimulated racial desegregation in education in order to improve the lives of minorities. She was born in 1917 and died in 1983. She was the eldest of two children born to Harold H. and Katie F. Phipps in Hot Springs, Arkansas where Mamie attended racially segregated elementary and secondary schools. She graduated Pine Bluff's Lanston High School in 1934 at the age of 16. After High School, Mamie enrolled in Howard University to major in Mathematics and Physics. After her first year at Howard University, Mamie met her future husband, Kenneth Bancroft Clark, who influenced her to change her major to Psychology due to her interest in children. She was enrolled into the Psychology program, she graduated magna cum laude in 1938 and then spent some time working in a law office where she was able to witness first-hand the damaging effects of segregation. She soon started graduate school and had two children while pursuing her studies. Her master's thesis titled “The Consciousness of Self in Negro Pre-school...
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...Equality and the Constitution 4 Class 1: Slavery and the Constitution 4 1. The Original Constitution 4 2. State v. Post 4 3. Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) 4 4. Reconstruction 5 5. Post-Reconstruction Cases 6 Class 2: The Advent of American Constitutional Law: Brown 7 6. RACIAL EQUALITY 7 7. Brown I (1954) The segregation of children in public schools based solely on race violates the Equal Protection Clause. 7 2. Brown II 8 3. What was the constitutional harm in Brown? 8 4. THEORY 8 5. Subsequent School Desegregation 9 Class 3: Local Efforts to Desegregate: Parents Involved 11 6. Parents Involved 11 Class 4: Rational Basis Review: Cleburne, Romer, etc. 13 2. Tiers of Scrutiny 13 3. Beazer (1979) 13 4. Moreno (1973) 14 5. Cleburne (1985) 14 6. Romer (1996) 15 7. Nordlinger (1992) and Allegheny Pittsburgh (1989) 16 8. Lee Optical (1955) 17 Class 5: Racial Classifications and Heightened Scrutiny: Strauder, Korematsu, Loving 17 9. Heightened Scrutiny Analysis 17 10. Strauder (1880) 17 11. Korematsu (1944) 18 12. Loving (1967) 19 13. Theories Supporting Strict Scrutiny of Racial Classifications 20 14. Tiers of Scrutiny 20 15. Tiers of Scrutiny Table 21 Class 6: Facially Neutral Classifications: Washington v. Davis 21 16. Types of Discrimination (from Fall) 21 X. Disparate Impact 21 XI. Purposive Discrimination 22 ...
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...The Black Experience: 1865 to Present Valery Taylor HIS 204 Prof. Steven Harn September 10, 2012 The Black Experience: 1865 to Present In the late nineteenth century our country has been defined by native born versus immigrants, rich versus poor and worker versus capitalist. But, in the former Confederacy, despite the call for the New South after Reconstruction tension still focused on the relationships between blacks and whites. Being of African American decent and raising a African American son I can still see the systematic effects of segregation, discrimination and isolation. However, through the civil rights movements of the past African American have attained equal rights in the present. In this paper, I will take a journey through the historical timeline of slavery. In addition, I will discuss historical events from 1865 to present that ended segregation, discrimination and isolation to attain equal rights. Africans were shipped to North America as Slaves in the 1600's, by 1787 the writers of the United States Constitution decided that slaves will count as three fifth of a person when deciding how many representative each state will have in Congress. In 1820 the Missouri Compromise was designed to maintain the number of free and slave states. During that period there were many notable freed slave that played significant roles in the advancement of the slaves. Isabella Baumfree also know as Sojourner Truth played a significant role...
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...On May 17, 1954, in the case of Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, the U.S. Supreme Court ended federally sanctioned racial segregation in the public schools by ruling unanimously that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." A groundbreaking case, Brown not only overturned the precedent of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which had declared "separate but equal facilities" constitutional, but also provided the legal foundation of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Although widely perceived as a revolutionary decision, Brown was in fact the culmination of changes both in the Court and in the strategies of the Civil Rights Movement. (see case summaries below) The Supreme Court had become more liberal in the years since it decided Plessy, largely due to appointments by Democratic Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. Though still all-white, the Court had issued decisions in the 1930s and 1940s that rendered racial separation illegal in certain situations. Now consolidated under the name Brown v. Board of Education, the five cases came before the Supreme Court in December, 1952. The lead attorney on the case, Thurgood Marshall, and his colleagues wrote that states had no valid reason to impose segregation, that racial separation — no matter how equal the facilities — caused psychological damage to black children, and that "restrictions or distinctions based upon race or color" violated the equal protection clause of...
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...Tereso Casiano Instructor: Van Hoy LST 2010:001 10 December 2011 Legal Activism In the legal profession, there are many people who become a lawyer not to get rich or to gain prestige, but who go into the law to make real changes. The practice of attempting to make changes to law through the courts is known as legal activism. Activist lawyers generally are passionate about the causes they are fighting for. They believe that there is a fundamental right to make changes to the law and that society demands that they do this. Some would argue that this kind of activism can be likened to that of the religious fanatic who has no doubts about what God wants of him. They argue that the law is supposed to remain constant and unwavering and that inconsistency in the law is dangerous to society itself. This paper will evaluate the above claims using examples of cases where activist lawyers have attempted to change a law that they believed needed to be changed and give examples of cases in which activism resulted in significant changes in not only the law as we knew it, but also society’s perception of right and wrong. Many lawyers believe that law was intended to remain constant and unwavering, and that any lawyer who tries to change the law is as dangerous as a religious fanatic. The difference between religious fanaticism and activist lawyers is that activist lawyers generally seek to reform the law in what they perceive to be an injustice to...
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...events occurred in order for America to become the integrated nation that it is today. A lot of protests and boycotts took place but they were usually non-violent, which the minorities discovered worked the best. Throughout this period in time schools, public places and other everyday places slowly but surely became integrated. One of the first major events that happened was the Brown v. Board of Education case. Oliver Brown, who was an African American, had a daughter. The school at which she attended was far from her house and in order to get there she had to pass by a unruly neighborhood which she was uncomfortable walking through. There was a school right across the street from her house but since the rule was “separate but equal is constitutional” she could not attend it because it was a white only school. Her father complained and the case was taken to the Supreme Court. The ruling of Plessey v. Ferguson was overturned and the new ruling was that “separate but equal isn’t equal.” After this event most school became integrated. The first time a jury became integrated was after the Hernandez v. Texas case. A Mexican, Pete Hernandez was wrongly accused of murder. At his trail, which consisted only of white jurors, he was inaccurately proclaimed guilty. He thought that it was unfair because it was not a jury of his peers. He said that if he is being judged by people who don’t like Mexicans, then clearly they would say he was guilty. This case went to the Supreme Court and...
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...Team A - Weekly Reflection Weekly Reflection This week in our class discussions, one topic in particular that is important is discrimination and how it is used in hiring practices. Because of legislation that has been passed, companies are now required to follow hiring practices that are supposed to eliminate most discrimination. However, even though companies are required to not discriminate it still does take place. When posting a new job announcement, some companies will manipulate the wording in the announcement so that only a specific individual can qualify for that job. As long as there is no mention of specific discrimination in the announcement, this is one way around the discrimination laws for hiring. Another topic in the discrimination field of employment is how technology allows for more discrimination than ever before. Because of the internet and information being solicited employers can find out any information about a potential candidate without even speaking to him or her. Employers can find out about race, gender, religion, national origin, and color by clicking a button on a computer. This new technology takes away the one on one interaction between an employer and a potential employee. The reverse side to the equation is the internet has allowed potential employees to flood employers with resumes. If an employer posts a job on www.monster.com, the company will receive thousands of resumes. It is impossible for the employers to meet with everyone that...
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...In 1982, millions of blacks living in the rural counties an small towns of the “New South” still dealt with the terrors of Jim Crow and racial exploitation which sparked the civil rights movement in the 1950s. It was more vivid in Mississippi. In 1949, black farmers owned 80,842 commercial cotton-producing farms in Mississippi black belt region, about 66 percent of all cotton farms in the state. During the 1950s and 1960s, corporations which went into agricultural production aggressively pushed thousands of these small rural farmers out of business. By 1964, the number of black owned cotton farms declined to 21,939 statewide. The figure dropped to only 1000 five years later.[1] Black farmers had extreme difficulty obtaining capital. Many insurance companies, which financed the bulk of farm loans, require loans to be at least $100,000. While commercial banks lend lesser amounts, they often require payment within five years, a term too short for a black landowner. Federal land back tended to require amounts of collateral that are too great for blacks to qualify. The federal government did little to reverse the decline in black farming. The general economic decline for most Mississippi blacks since the 1960s has been accompanied by the resurrection of white racist terrorism and political violence. The tortured body of one unidentified black man was found floating down the river in Cleveland, MS. The man’s sex organs had been hacked off and the coroner later reported...
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...Loving v. Virginia A Landmark Supreme Court Case of Interracial Marriages Natasha Plotnikov GVPT 432 Professor Davis December 4th, 2013 Loving v. Virginia was a very important Supreme Court case. It played a significant role in the civil rights movement: the legalization of interracial marriage. The case evaluates the constitutional question whether a statutory law of Virginia is solely based on racial discrimination and if it violates the Equal Protection and Due process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Equal Protection Clause forbids states from denying any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws (Epstein, Walker, 2013). Nevertheless, for the couple it was just a fight to stay married and be treated as equal as every legally married couple. They were simply in love and never intended to be in the center of attention. Richard and Mildred Loving were residents of the small town of Central Point, Virginia. They had dated each other since they were teenagers. When they decided to get married Richard learned that marriage...
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...The Road to Brown tells the story of the millions of nameless blacks who faced devastating hardships caused by Jim Crow, which simply robbed them of the rights granted by the 14th and 15th Amendments. Under the "separate but equal" doctrine of the Supreme Court's 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, black citizens were denied the right to vote, to attend white schools, to be buried in white cemeteries, etc. Those who objected were liable to be lynched. The era of Jim Crow provoked men such as, Charles Houston to fight back for those who were unable. Charles Hamilton Houston, "the man who killed Jim Crow”, grew up during the Jim Crow Era and devoted his entire life trying to destroy it. Houston came from a privileged background in regards to blacks. He finished top of his class in high school preparing him for a prosperous college career. Unfortunately, before Houston had the chance to attend college, he served in a segregated regiment during World War I. During this time Houston wrote about the hate he constantly faced from his fellow countrymen due to his race and promised himself he would study law to fix the lack of justice, changing the situation for his people. In 1920, he entered Harvard law school where he became the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review. Later, Houston would become dean of Howard University Law School and chief counsel to the NAACP. He also presented a number of supporting cases leading up to Brown v. Board of Education. Houston strategically...
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