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Showing results 1 – 9 of 9
Glossary Term – Event
Plessy v. Ferguson
In Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled a Louisiana law segregating train cars was constitutional based on the doctrine of “separate but equal.”
Glossary Term – Event
Brown v. Board of Education
In the case of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court struck down Plessy v. Ferguson’s “separate but equal” policy when it ruled that segregation of public school children based on race was unconstitutional.
Glossary Term – Event
Southern Manifesto
Ninety-six members of the House and Senate signed the “Southern Manifesto” condemning the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education and declaring that the decision would have the effect of “destroying the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through ninety years of patient effort by the good people of both races.”
Teaching Resource
Travels Through Time: The Impact of Supreme Court Decisions on the Struggle for African American Equality
Overview
After the Civil War, African Americans were under attack as they struggled for equal rights in America. Laws were put in place during Reconstruction to assure Freedmen basic civil rights. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments gave former slaves freedom, citizenship, equal privileges in each state under federal law, and the right to vote.
Many southern states made their own laws in order to block the equal treatment of African Americans. Poll taxes, black codes, and Jim Crow laws are...
Teaching Resource
Plessy v. Ferguson
Introduction
People who commit crimes are often thought to be “bad” people or people who are engaged in deleterious behavior. This lesson looks at two separate crimes in order to frame law-breaking as a sometimes more complex issue. The first crime that students will examine is that of Homer Plessy, who violated Louisiana’s Separate Car Act and whose appeal of his arrest to the Supreme Court resulted in the codification of the "separate but equal" laws that were enacted in many states. The second crime that students...
Teaching Resource
Challenging Segregation in Public Education
Background
The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, during the congressional Reconstruction era. The amendment’s most significant provision—“No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”—created the potential for two interpretations. It seemed to some that Congress...