Homer Plessy. If you were to see him on the street, what social class and what ethnic background would you guess was his? put your cursor over the picture. Were you right?
Download, read, and Reflect upon, from The Core Canon,
There have not been many amendments to the United States Constitution in the over 220 years since the document was first adopted. But adopting an amendment is not necessarily a guarantee that the Amendment will be honored. On one occasion, President Andrew Jackson simply ignored a decision by the Supreme Court in Worcester v. Georgia. The Amendments with which we are specifically concerned today are Amendments number 13, section one, 14, Section 2, and 15, Section one.
I don't think it necessary to mark-up these amendments. If there are any you need discussed just call out in class and we'll do it. What we do need to remember is that shortly after the End of Reconstruction, the Segregation Era began in the United States, and these three amendments were largely ignored in the Southern States (there are ways to keep a person in "servitude" without calling him or her a slave.
As you might guess by what you see here, we're going to be switching our focus a bit. We've seen the declaration we've read this far all suggest that human rights are universal and that everyone should be covered by the "Four Freedoms". Yet anyone with the smallest knowledge of United States History knows that these "rights" were violated first by slavery and then by segregation. We'll take a look at that now--and after that, at the denial of certain rights to women. To do this we're going to leap back more than a hundred years to look at the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. Be aware that cases brought to the Supreme Court do not need more than a majority to decide one way or the other. The Majority Rules. Those in the minority are allowed to write their own dissenting opinion, and in this case, Justice Brown (below, left) wrote the majority decision, and Justice Brown dissented. Click on their biographies. Notice anything ironic about the birthplaces and residences of the two men? (Hint: which was born in a state which practiced slavery.
Blow is the famous film "Birth of a Nation" based on the book The Klansman, Click on the picture to reach the book, courtesy of Archive.org. The film is too long to show in class. I hope you'll look at it. Note that all actors are whites. Can you guess why.
As you mark up your text before putting it in the drop box, what I want you to do is compare the arguments given by the two justices. What arguments are given in favor of segregation by Justice Brown? Are they valid, or invalid- You can do a code for that, and add a sticky note explaining why they are so. Then look at the counter-arguments of Justice Harlan. Do the same thing with them. Which to you think makes the better case, the Justice for the Majority, or the Justice Dissenting
We won’t need to spend a lot of time on Brown v. Board of Education, which celebrated its fifty-fifth anniversary last spring. Our primary objective is to see what the court’s reasoning is. Earl Warren, the author of the Opinion, reverses the decision of the court in the case Plessy v. Ferguson, which had stood for nearly 60 years. The Supreme court rarely reverses a decision. This is one of those rare times.when the court declares that a previous court got it wrong.
Courts need some grounds of argument for reversing themselves. Look for anything in this decision which might show influence of the UDHR, published just six years before.
Look too for evidence that the court is now relying on science (particularly the social sciences) in coming to a decision
Mark-up your documents in ways which focus on these ideas. Some have said that Justice Harlan was the "tenth Justice" sitting on the Warren Court. Is there any reason why they might think that way.
For those who made it this far. here's a little something extra. Miriam Makeba with Paul Simon singing in South Africa. Ms. Makeba was a fighter in the struggle against Apartheid. Hope you enjoy the singing.
