African Americans Versus The Social Sciences Essay — страница 2

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through many state governments. Jim Crow laws were legal segregation laws that banned the integration of the races in certain establishments. Some states passed Jim Crow laws that segregated restaurants, busses, railroads, streetcars, theatres, and even hospital waiting rooms. This segregation ideal was also spread to schools, parks, and even cemeteries in a push to prohibit any contact between blacks and whites as equals. The President’s Committee on Civil Rights (1950) gave a statement on their beliefs of the Jim Crow laws. They hoped for the Supreme Court to deliver a new verdict in the claims of the Civil Rights Acts. “No argument or rationalization can alter this basic fact: a law which forbids a group of American citizens to associate with other citizens in the ordinary

course of daily living creates inequality by imposing a caste status on the minority group.” Of course this statement would not occur until 1950 it still indicates the thought of inequality that I will touch upon later in this piece. Now that I have established the method in which segregation laws came into being, let me now turn to how many of these laws were defended. It is interesting to see how many views and types of people can take on the same idea of segregation based on their different backgrounds and mores. I will begin first with legal and political defense and then I will shift towards defense of segregation bases on science and religion. The Supreme Court, in their ruling the unconstitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, caused the state governments to

conceive the Jim Crows laws and make them legitimate. “The Supreme Court, asserting that the adjustment of social relations of individuals was beyond the power of Congress, declared the Civil Rights Act unconstitutional in 1883….Even though the law had seldom been enforced, its existence was a symbol of the nation’s equalitarian aspirations, and its nullification by the Supreme Court.” Abolitionists held the Civil Rights Act of 1975 as a symbol for prosperous times ahead, but its defeat only resulted in more negative legal decisions. There are others that also add to the legal and political aspect of segregation. There have a been a few United States Supreme Court decisions that have supported the justification of segregation and slavery. One of the first decisions

delivered by the Supreme Court was Prigg versus Pennsylvania, where in 1842, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court. The Fugitive Slave Act was a piece of legislation that allowed for the capture and return of runaway slaves. Once captured, the slave was put on trial and the judge was allowed to decide the status of the slave without a trial jury. It is important to notice that the act was passed in 1793, but never challenged until 1842. Another Supreme Court decision was the Dred Scott case in 1856. Dred Scott was a slave that was transported from a slave state into a free territory. When he was in the free territory he claimed that since he was in a free territory he was, in fact, a free man. The lawsuit filed went to the Supreme Court that decided

that slaves were not citizens and that they could not file a federal lawsuit. The court also decided that Congress could not ban slavery in the United States territories or its states, because slavery had to be decided by the state themselves and not the Federal government. More importantly, this made Congress powerless to create such legislation against slavery, but allowed Southern states to go ahead and create laws that enforced slavery and segregation. This decision is important in that the Supreme Court decided that slaves, or blacks, were not citizens or even people. Also, provisions made by Congress about whether a state would be a free or slave state, such as the Missouri Compromise of 1820, were now void and unconstitutional because Congress did not have the power to

pass such a decree. The final case that I will describe is known as the “separate but equal” case, Plessy versus Ferguson, in 1896. By 1896, Jim Crow laws had become a part of life in the South. Inflexible segregation laws had been passed and now practiced in all public and private facilities. “The Supreme Court insisted in 1896 that all Jim Crow facilities be equal, but in practice the South, and the North also, ignored this dictum. And the Negro had no redress. His loss of political power destroyed his ability to influence public policy.” This decision caused the creation of the “separate but equal” facilities throughout the United States. Separate facilities were practiced in schools, in railroads, in restaurants, and theatres. In the South, in areas where