Inherently unequal : the betrayal of equal rights by the Supreme Court, 1865-1903 / Lawrence Goldstone

Object Details

Author

Goldstone, Lawrence 1947-

Subject

United States Supreme Court History

Contents

Construction and reconstruction : two great experiments -- Beyond party or politics : the capitalists ascend -- Another reconstruction : the Lincoln Court -- Siege : Congress counterattacks -- Bad science and big money -- Corporate presidency : Ulysses Grant and the Court -- Equality frays : Cruikshank and Reese -- 1876 : Justice Bradley disposes -- A jury of one's peers : Strauder and Rives -- Deconstruction : the civil rights cases -- Floodgates : the rebirth of white rule -- Blurring the boundaries : the expansion of due process -- Confluence : Plessy v. Ferguson -- One man, no vote : Williams v. Mississippi -- Mr. Justice Holmes concurs -- Movement

Summary

Between 1865 and 1870, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the U.S., the 14th conferred citizenship and equal protection under the law to all Americans, white or black, and the 15th gave black American males the right to vote. In 1875 the far reaching Civil Rights Act granted all Americans regardless of color "the full and equal enjoyment" of public conveyances and places of amusement. Yet eight years later, in 1883, the Supreme Court, by an 8-1 vote, overturned the Civil Rights Act as unconstitutional, arguing Congress had overstepped its authority. As the author pointedly acknowledges, in the next 20 years despite "by the dawn of the 20th century the U.S. had become the nation of Jim Crow laws, quasi slavery, and precisely the same two tiered system of justice that had existed in the slave era." How and why this happened, and the ramifications and reverberations unto today, is the subject of this work. As he has done before, the author challenges the conventional view of history through a rigorous examination of the historical record. He makes clear the Supreme Court, in cases as celebrated as Plessy v. Ferguson and the equally important Williams v. Mississippi, was deeply guilty by association, turning a blind eye to the obvious reality of Jim Crow, preferring to focus instead on constitutional minutiae, and demonstrating the fallacy and hypocrisy of a strict interpretation of the Constitution. He reveals clear evidence that the great black migrations north were less about seeking opportunity than about escaping tyranny.

2011

C2011

19th century

Type

Books

Physical description

242 p., [8] p. of plates : ill., ports. ; 24 cm

Place

United States

Smithsonian Libraries

Topic

African Americans--Legal status, laws, etc--History

Race discrimination--Law and legislation--History

Record ID

siris_sil_949252

Metadata Usage (text)

CC0