Summarised notes of key supreme court cases and decisions throughout 1865-92 for the African Americans chapter. Categorised into social, political and economic.
African American Civil Rights: Supreme Court Cases
Plessy V Ferguson 1896 SOCIAL
Established the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ from an incident where Homer Plessy, who
was one eighth African American refused to sit a carriage for African Americans on a train.
This was often used to justify segregation unfairly and dominated policy for years.
Cunningham v Board of Education 1899 SOCIAL
Established separate but equal in education, which was used to justify segregation in
schools.
Mississippi v Williams 1898 POLITICAL
Upheld the use of poll tax, literacy tests, residency requirements and disenfranchisement
clauses, including the grandfather clause which allowed for political discrimination until the
voting rights act in 1965.
Brown v Board of Education 1954 SOCIAL
Ruled that racial segregation of children in schools was unconstitutional which reflected
progression away from the separate but equal doctrine. This case took place after a black
girl was denied entry to an all white elementary school, despite the nearest school for black
people being difficult for her to get to
Griggs v Duke Power Company 1971 ECONOMIC
The supreme court embraced employment opportunity for all individuals, regardless of their
race, and forbade use of arbitrary tests e.g. literacy or IQ tests to evaluate employees. This
was triggered by the Duke Power Company which made African Americans get a high
school diploma and pass an IQ test to get a job.
Bakke v Regents of the University of California 1978 ECONOMIC
Challenged affirmative action after a white student was rejected from medical school where
African American students with lower scores were accpted and this therefore concluded that
using racial quotas was unconstitutional but affirmative action could be deemed as
constitutional in some circumstances
Slaughterhouse case 1873 ECONOMIC/SOCIAL
A group of butchers believed they were deprived of a livelihood because of a monopoly and
they saw this as an infringement of the 14th amendment and it was decided that the rights of
citizens were under state control, not federal
Smith v Allright 1944 POLITICAL
Outlawed the white primary in Texas which was where only white people could have a
preliminary vote to choose canditates of the Democratic Party to stand in the general
election
Browder v Gayle 1956 SOCIAL
Confirmed that the ruling of Brown v Board of Education also applied to buses, as suggested
by the US federal court which ended the bus boycotts when a black woman wanted to ride
on integrated buses
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