...Case Title: Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) Plaintiff: Homer Adolph Plessy (man of mixed race) Defendant: John Howard Ferguson (louisiana judge) The Law: This case involves racial segregation laws and was the first major case to look into the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s (1868) equal-protection clause. The equal-protection clause prohibits the states from denying “equal protection of the laws” to any person within their jurisdictions. It also allowed for laws to be implemented that would achieve racial segregation by means of separate and supposedly equal facilities and services. The Facts of the Case: In 1891, 5 years before this case, a group in New Orleans created the Citizens’ Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law. Homer Plessy purchased a railroad ticket for travel within Louisiana and decided to sit in a car reserved for white passengers only. Although Plessy appeared white he was one-eighth African American, meaning he should have been sitting...
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...low as to hate him.” —Martin Luther King, Jr. (Nguyen). Many African Americans had many troubles when trying to fight for their rights. Therefore three court cases have changed many perspectives on how black people should be treated. “We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.” —Martin Luther King, Jr. (Nguyen). These cases influenced many changes in the civil rights movements for African American people. Plessy v. Ferguson case was about how the Court upheld a Louisiana law requiring restaurants, hotels, hospitals, and other public places to serve African Americans in separate, but ostensibly equal, accommodations. Thus, African American people staged boycotts with other white people who believed in and like black people. Although this helped many black people get the same equal rights as white people when being served at a public place. This also changed the way black people were looked at in the same way as white people. In summary the case judgement Plessy v. Ferguson helped colored people with getting the same rights as white people in public places (Plessy v. Ferguson). Brown v. Broad of Education case was about the unfair ways of how the different races were harassed in school. This happened because African American children were given poor learning environments and the...
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...Phase 2 Individual Project Colorado Technical University Multicultural Issues Professor V. Vila Cathy Bairfoot July 31, 2014 Introduction The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was revolutionary piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed discrimination against African-Americans and women, including forms of segregation. The Civil Rights Act also terminated all unequal applications in regards to voter registration requirements and all forms of segregation in schools, in the workplace and any facilities that offered services to the general public. The American people before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was treated differently and was segregated. The blacks had to sit in the back of the bus, eat outside of restaurants if they were not in their own section of town. In schools blacks had their own water fountains, bathrooms, lockers, etc. Blacks in some areas had to get up as early as 5:00 a.m. to get the bus to get to school. The purpose of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is to enforce the Constitutional rights to vote, to confer jurisdiction upon the district courts of the United States to provide injuctive relief against discrimination...
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...1865 to 1900 Write a three to four (3-4) page paper on the period from Reconstruction through widespread industrialization in the Western United States (approximate time period: 1865-1900.) Your paper should cover the following: Identify at least (2) two major historical turning points in the period under discussion. Death of Lincoln in 1865. Lincoln’s death changed the course of the country trying to rebuild after the Civil War. President Andrew Johnson was not popular and could not convince Congress especially the southerners to go along with him. Lincoln had a plan to build up the South and end the hate. He ordered amnesty and that the south be rebuilt. He pardoned, with a few exceptions, any southerner who would swear allegiance to the Union and the United States Constitution. His plan was to let the Confederate states back into the Legislature, but it was not working too well. We will never know how that went because he was assassinated. His idea always was to try to “mend fences” and forgive. The entire civil rights movement was set back because of the death of Lincoln. The Railroad The two railroads, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific met in Utah in May of 1869. It was merely ceremonial, but the real occasion was that it meant the railroads now would run from coast to coast. The availability of the railroad changed the face of the west and the whole of the United States. Remote places now could ship farm products and receive goods from...
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...abolished after the Civil War but this abolition did not increase the standing of the Black Community. Schaefer (pg. 177) theorizes that slavery set the foundation for the problems with racial equality that we face today. After the Civil War, the African American community did not become the equal American citizens they imagined they would become. Segregation became common practice after the Reconstruction period that followed the Civil War (www.ourdocuments.gov, n.d.). This segregation included schools, restaurants, and quite infamously, public transportation. Public transportation was segregated in such a way that black and white people had separate seating areas on busses and trains were segregated by car. The landmark case of Plessy vs. Ferguson upheld a "separate but equal" statute in...
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...Brown v. Board of Education Ronald Still Embry Riddle Aeronautical University Brown v. Board of Education Background The Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education dates back to 1954, the case was centered on the Fourteenth Amendment and challenged the segregation of schools solely on the basis of race. The Brown case was not the only case of its time involving school segregation, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was leading the push to desegregate public schools in the United States (Gold, 2005). Brown v. Board of Education was a consolidation of four cases that had made their way through the court system. It was 1950 and Linda brown was just seven years old, she lived in Topeka, Kansas and was African American descent (she was black). Each mourning Linda traveled 21 blocks and crossed through a dangerous railroad yard to get to school. Her journey to school took an hour and twenty minutes. White children who lived in the same neighborhood only traveled 7 blocks in a considerably less amount of time (Gold, 2005). Linda’s father Oliver filed a lawsuit against the Topeka Board of Education arguing that he wanted the same conditions for his daughter (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 2009). The case was heard by three judges in Federal District Court, and they ruled against the plaintiffs, the case went to Circuit Court of Appeals and then to the U.S Supreme Court (Topeka, Kansas: Segregation in the Heartland). ...
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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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...has been used to refer to cohabitation or intermarriage between racial groups. Regulated by state law, miscegenation was illegal in many states for decades. However, interracial marriage in the United States has been fully legal in all U.S. states since the 1967 Supreme Court decision, Loving v. Virginia, that decreed all state antimiscegenation laws unconstitutional. Many states, of course, had chosen to legalize interracial marriage much earlier. According to a May 14, 2012, Huffington Post article entitled “Interracial Marriage Statistics: Pew Report Finds Mixed-Race Marriage Rates Rising,” the 1980 Census (the first to collect data on interracial marriage) reported that 3% of all married couples were from different races. The number had risen to 8.4% (one in twelve couples) by 2010. Looking at marriages recorded in the years between 2008 and 2010, we find that 22% of newly-married couples in Western states were of different races or ethnicities, compared to 14% in the South, 13% in the Northeast, and 11% in the Midwest. QUESTION 1: Analyze and evaluate each case independently by providing the following (about two paragraphs per case): LOVING V. VIRGINIA CASE. 1. Facts of the case: In 1958, Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in the District of Columbia. The two had gone to the District of Columbia to obtain a marriage license and returned to their home state of Virginia afterward. The couple was then charged with and convicted of...
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...their activities, allocate their resources, and assess their risks) 8. Maximizing individual freedom (e.g., the rights of freedom of speech, religion, and association granted by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution) What is Law? Definition A body of rules of action or conduct prescribed by controlling authority, and having binding legal force. That which must be obeyed and followed by citizens subject to sanctions or legal consequences is a law. Qualities of Good Law What qualities make for good law? Fairness Flexibility As time changes, our values and our thought of fairness changes so the law has to flexible enough to change with society Brown v. Board of Education (1954) U.S. Supreme Court Brown V. Board of Education (1954) Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) U.S. Supreme Court Separate but Equal $ Caucasian Students $...
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...third-grader in Topeka, Kansas, had to travel a mile to get to her black elementary school, even though there was a white school only seven blocks away. Linda's father, Oliver, once tried to enlist Linda into the white school but the principal refused. Oliver then contacted William Everett Glenn, Sr., a Topeka attorney and Mckinley Burnett, the head of the Topeka NAACP branch, about his concerns regarding "separate but equal policies" of Topeka schools. The separate but equal doctrine came about in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson which stated that having blacks and whites in separate equal facilities did not violate the Equal Protection Clause. On May 17, 1954 the United States Supreme Court decided unanimously that The Board of Education acted unconstitutionally and that they violated the 14th Amendment by separated children if for no other reason than for their race. Webber, Andrew "Brown v. Board of Education about the case" [online] available http://brownvboard.org/summary/ The unanimous court decision announced by Chief Justice Earl Warren was the turning point in the struggle to eradicate all forms of racial segregation. 4 2. The Watergate Incident is one of the most controversial acts of corruption in American History. “The Watergate Tapes” (or Nixon Tapes). These tapes were a set of recordings between President Richard Nixon and many Government Officials such as White House Counsel- John Dean. The discovery that Nixon had misused...
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...Ricci v. DeStefano Jennifer Drab Baker College Abstract Ricci v. DeStefano is case based on reverse discrimination. The New Haven firefighters that brought this suit against the city did so on the belief that the city in its efforts to avoid litigation violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Reverse discrimination is a term that is used widely; however, it is very difficult to move forward with this claim in a court of law. The New Haven firefighters that brought the suit had their case heard before the Supreme Court of the United States. This was not a case that the justices took lightly; they asked many difficult questions, which looked at many different aspects of Title VII. The answer from the high court is that rejecting the test scores in fear of Title VII litigation is not grounds enough to disqualify candidates that qualified for promotion. In the end, the high court upheld the firefighters claim that the city’s rejection of the exam scores violated the rights of those that qualified based on the exam. Introduction Ricci v. DeStefano, is case of reverse discrimination within the fire department of New Haven, Connecticut. This case is an illustration that affirmative action does not always result in fairness. New Haven city officials created a very comprehensive written examination for testing those fire fighters that were looking to be promoted to captain and lieutenant (Epstein, 2009). Unfortunately, the examination showed that there was disparity...
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...US/AZ Government-Pre-Test Section 1 of this examination contains 100 multiple-choice questions. Therefore, please be careful to fill in only the ovals that are preceded by numbers 1 through 100 on your answer sheet. After you have decided which of the suggested answers is best, COMPLETELY fill in the corresponding oval on the answer sheet. Give only one answer to each question. If you change an answer, be sure that the previous mark is erased completely. 1) The Preamble to the Constitution begins A) "We the People . . ." B) "Four score and seven years ago . . ." C) "When in the course of human events . . ." D) "In order to form a more perfect Union . . .” E) "These are the times that try men's souls . . .” 2) A social contract theory of government was proposed by A) Plato and Aristotle. B) Aquinas and Luther. C) Newton and the separatists. D) Locke and Hobbes. E) Plato and Luther. 3) Locke's Second Treatise on Civil Government sets out a theory of A) the divine rights of kings. B) aristocracy. C) democracy. D) republicanism. E) natural rights. 4) Indirect democracy is based on A) consensus. B) unanimity. C) the system of government used in ancient Greece. D) representation. E) "mob rule." 5) Republics are A) representative democracies. B) direct democracies. C) a hallmark of unitary governments. D) frequently found in totalitarian regimes. E) another name for states. 6) Who was the major author of the Declaration of Independence? A) George...
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...How far were the actions of the African Americans the main reason for the advancement of the Civil Rights in the period 1865-1980? “Power concedes nothing without demand, it never has and it never will”[1]. Said by Fredrick Douglass in 1857, an escaped slave who had bearded the brunt of the slave years. He had come to the realisation that African Americans had a fountain of “power”; however that power that they possessed would never establish anything without a “demand”. Fredrick Douglass awoke the conscious of African Americans to make them realise that wanting to be free and wanting to achieve full civil rights was not enough, neither was enduring a life under white supremacy waiting for life after death to see a new dawn .Believing and hoping was not enough. “Power concedes nothing without demand” the solution is to be willing to work hard to establish it yourself by demanding what belongs to them. However using power in order to concede civil rights was a struggle which was acknowledged by Fredrick Douglass “Without struggle there is no success”. To achieve advancement in African American Civil Rights, African Americans had to undergo a process of struggle. A rainbow is not made without rain; you can not want rain without thunder and lightening being accompanied by it. To achieve full civil rights African Americans had to pay the price along the way which was persecution, de-humanisation and scrutiny. Martin Luther King being inspired by Fredrick Douglass said “Freedom...
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...death penalty in the U.S. What follows is a summary of the analyses. Texas has become ground zero for capital punishment. Between 1976 (when the Supreme Court lifted its prohibition on the death penalty) and 1998 Texas executed 167 people. Next in rank was Virginia which executed 60 during the same period. (**my note** as of today, Texas has executed 237 individuals, and Virginia has executed 80) Why do capital murder cases proceed through the Texas state court system with a speed unimaginable in other parts of the country? Brent Newton, in an article entitled "Capital Punishment: Texas Could Learn a Lot from Florida,"1argues that there are three procedures unique to the state's judicial system that enable it to execute convicted murderers with astonishing frequency: 1. Texas' appellate judges are elected to office and hence serve according to the pleasure of the public. Not surprisingly, they require a record of toughness on criminals in order to win re-election. Also, there are many indications that elected appellate judges generally are of a lesser quality than their appointed counterparts in other states. Newton even claims that these elected judges do not carefully consider the complexities of each specific death penalty case. As evidence, Newton argues that "[e]specially during the past few years...the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has refused to publish most of its decisions in death penalty cases, including many cases that discuss important issues of 1st impression...
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... 1. Enumerated Powers 2. Implied Powers C. The Powers of the States II. Federalism in Historical Perspective A. An Indestructible Union (1789–1865) 1. The Nationalist View: McCulloch v. Maryland 2. The States’ Rights View: The Dred Scott Decision B. Dual Federalism and Laissez-Faire Capitalism (1865–1937) 1. The Fourteenth Amendment and State Discretion 2. Judicial Protection of Business 3. National Authority Prevails C. Toward National Citizenship III. Federalism Today A. Interdependency and Intergovernmental Relations B. Government Revenues and Intergovernmental Relations 1. Fiscal Federalism 2. Categorical and Block Grants C. Devolution 1. The Republican Revolution 2. Devolution, Judicial Style IV. The Public’s Influence: Setting the Boundaries of Federal-State Power Chapter Summary The foremost characteristic of the American political system is its division of authority between a national government and the states. The first U.S. government, established by the Articles of Confederation, was essentially a loose alliance of states. In establishing the basis for a more...
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