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Race Relations in the United States

Race Relations in the United States. It shall be unlawful for a negro and white person to play together or in company with each other in any game of cards or dice, dominoes or checkers. —Birmingham, Alabama, 1930.

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Race Relations in the United States

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  1. Race Relations in the United States

  2. It shall be unlawful for a negro and white person to play together or in company with each other in any game of cards or dice, dominoes or checkers. —Birmingham, Alabama, 1930

  3. Separate free schools shall be established for the education of children of African descent; and it shall be unlawful for any colored child to attend any white school, or any white child to attend a colored school.—Missouri, 1929

  4. All marriages between a white person and a negro, or between a white person and a person of negro descent to the fourth generation inclusive, are hereby forever prohibited. – Florida, 1940

  5. If any white person intermarry with a colored person, or any colored person intermarry with a white person, he shall be guilty of a felony and shall be punished by confinement in the penitentiary for not less than one nor more than five years.– Virginia, 1967

  6. Jim Crow

  7. Separate but Equal • From the 1880s into the 1960s, a majority of American states enforced segregation through "Jim Crow" laws (so called after a black character in minstrel shows). • Many states (and cities, too) could impose legal punishments on people for consorting with members of another race. • The most common types of laws forbade intermarriage and ordered business owners and public institutions to keep their black and white clientele separated.

  8. Separate but Equal • With Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racially separate facilities, if equal, did not violate the Constitution. Segregation, the Court said, was not discrimination.

  9. Plessyv. Ferguson • The state of Louisiana enacted a law that required separate railway cars for blacks and whites. In 1892, Homer Adolph Plessy--who was seven-eighths Caucasian--took a seat in a "whites only" car of a Louisiana train. He refused to move to the car reserved for blacks and was arrested.

  10. Plessyv. Ferguson • 14th Amendment: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. 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.

  11. What did the court decide? • Justice Brown conceded that the 14th amendment intended to establish absolute equality for the races before the law. But Brown noted that "in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races unsatisfactory to either." In short, segregation does not in itself constitute unlawful discrimination.

  12. When did segregation end?

  13. Brown v. Board of Education • Brown v. Board of Education was filed against the Topeka, Kansas school board by representative-plaintiff Oliver Brown, parent of one of the children denied access to Topeka's white schools.

  14. Brown v. Board of Education • Brown claimed that Topeka's racial segregation violated the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause because the city's black and white schools were not equal to each other and never could be.

  15. Brown v. Board of Education • In a unanimous decision, the Court held that racial segregation of children in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

  16. Brown v. Board of Education • The Court concluded that, even if the tangible facilities were equal between the black and white schools, racial segregation in schools is "inherently unequal" and is thus always unconstitutional. • The Court ordered the states to integrate their schools "with all deliberate speed."

  17. Little Rock 9 • http://www.history.com/topics/montgomery-bus-boycott/videos#little-rock-9

  18. Greensboro • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbbcjn4d1cE

  19. Freedom Riders • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zBY6gkpbTg&feature=related

  20. Montgomery Bus Boycott • Why would an organized bus boycott put economic strain on the city? • What was the bus line's reaction to the boycott's second month of success? • Three other African-Americans complied with the bus driver's demand that they move to give their seats to whites. How might you have felt had you given up your seat while Mrs. Parks held firm in her conviction to keep her seat? • Mrs. Parks was originally arrested for violating a city segregation ordinance but the charge was later changed to read "a violation of a state law, which gives bus drivers the power to assign and reassign seating." Why would prosecutors wish to change the charge?

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