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The Civil Rights Cases of 1883 |
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Although the United States Supreme Court played a significant role in the mid-20th Century where protecting black civil rights was concerned, such was not the case in the late 19th Century. In fact, the protections guaranteed by the constitutional amendments and congressional statutes enacted following the Civil War were largely taken away by the court.
In the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, the Supreme Court ruled that the protection of rights guaranteed by the 14th Amendment applied only to the states and not to individuals. Thus an 1875 act of Congress prohibiting discrimination against blacks in inns, public conveyances, theaters, and other public accommodations or amusements was declared unconstitutional because it was limiting private behavior rather than state behavior.
In retrospect, it is interesting to ponder how different United States history might have been if the Supreme Court had not ruled as it did in the Civil Rights Cases of 1883. Congress, after all, passed a public accommodations law, much the same law that members of the civil rights movement worked for so diligently in the 1950s and early 1960s. If the Supreme Court in the early 1880s had upheld the power of Congress to pass such a law and prohibit racial discrimination in public places throughout the entire nation, the course of civil rights history in the United States could have been completely different.
A careful reading of the relevant portions of the 14th Amendment, however, reveals why the Supreme Court ruled as it did. "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 the due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Clearly the 14th Amendment prohibitions were on the state governments and not upon the private individuals who lived within those states.
The impact of this decision on the position of blacks in the South was extensive. It meant the 14th Amendment could not be used to protect black Americans from mistreatment by southern individuals - it could only be used to protect black Americans from official actions by the states. The result was a system of oppression in which private individuals could not only discriminate against blacks but could actually terrorize them, confident in the knowledge that the power of the United States Government in Washington, D.C., would not be used to punish them. The state governments, which were limited by the 14th Amendment, thus needed only to stand aside and let private individuals do the discriminating and/or terrorizing, simply being careful not to pass any state laws or initiate any state actions that took away any of the rights protected by the 14th Amendment.
This was the legal situation that made the beating, the lynching, and the assassination such effective weapons for subjugating blacks to white majority rule in the South. Beatings, lynchings, and assassinations were carried out by individuals rather than by state governments, thus preventing the national government in Washington, D.C., from using the 14th Amendment as an excuse to intervene. Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, national law enforcement officials were unable to act to stop lynchings and racial murders in the South because, according to the Supreme Court, the 14th Amendment only limited the states. If white individuals who beat, lynched, or murdered blacks were to be caught and punished for their crimes, it would be up to the state governments, and not the national government, to do it.
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