People of Color and Equal Rights

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard D. Brown
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Professional Standards ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
Dred Scott ◽  
The U.S

In New England, if anywhere, equal rights might have included people of color. Free blacks comprised a small fraction of the population, and slave uprisings posed no threat. Yet in this region, as in others, racism prevailed. Discrimination in public business, including voting and education, was commonplace. But in criminal trials procedural safeguards and professional standards limited the effects of prejudice. Public opinion was not so restrained. And in rural New England vigilantes shut down New Hampshire’s racially integrated Noyes Academy and Prudence Crandall’s school for black girls in Connecticut. Connecticut banned schools like Crandall’s, she was jailed briefly, and the state’s supreme court denied equal rights for blacks, setting a precedent for the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dred Scott ruling.

People of Color and the Promise Betrayed

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard D. Brown
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Black Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
New Science ◽  
Dred Scott ◽  
The Supreme Court

In its 1857 Dred Scott decision the Supreme Court ruled that “negroes” were not, and never had been, citizens of the United States. Two justices dissented, declaring that when the Constitution was adopted free blacks possessed the rights of citizens, including suffrage, in seven states. The rights of free blacks, like other citizens, were thereby protected. But the Court majority, conflating slavery with race, denied citizenship to people of color. In fact, starting in 1776 a majority of states recognized the rights of people of color for at least a generation. Only after the free black population grew into the tens of thousands did states north and south act to curtail those rights. The new restrictions rested on old prejudices reinforced by the new “science” of race. Nature, it was claimed, warranted the denial of equal rights. So in new northern states—Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan—as well as old ones like Pennsylvania, New York, and Connecticut, equality was written out of law. By 1858, when Lincoln debated Stephen Douglas for election to the Senate from Illinois, some public figures explicitly denied the self-evident natural rights of the Declaration. But Lincoln made the Declaration’s self-evident truths his cornerstone. Regardless of race or nationality, he argued, natural rights applied to all men.

Disputing the Supreme Court Decision, 1857

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
William F. Moore ◽  
Jane Ann Moore
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Abraham Lincoln ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Dred Scott ◽  
Federal Authority ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines Abraham Lincoln and Owen Lovejoy's criticism of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1857 ruling in the case of Dred Scott. The Dred Scott decision, written by Chief Justice Roger Taney, affirmed that slaves were not citizens and indeed “had no rights which a white man was bound to accept.” Lincoln and Lovejoy denounced the Supreme Court's interpretation that the Constitution provided federal authority to reduce human beings to property without rights, accusing it of political abuse of judicial power. This chapter begins with a discussion of the Illinois Supreme Court's previous rulings in connection with the slave transit law, along with Lincoln and Lovejoy's argument that humans could not legally be reduced to property under the Constitution. It then considers the two men's views on religion and politics as well as their response to the Dred Scott decision. It also looks at Lincoln and Lovejoy's preparations for the 1858 elections.

Subordinate Citizens

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard D. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Family Law ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
Women's Literacy ◽  
Capital Cases ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
Inalienable Rights

Though no one doubted that women and children were citizens, there was also general agreement that they could not possess all the rights of citizens, especially full property and political rights. Abigail Adams challenged this status quo in 1776; and in succeeding decades a movement to supply equal rights for women gained momentum. Women’s literacy fed women’s political advocacy, including petitioning campaigns on behalf of Indians, abolition, and women’s rights. But post–Civil War politics blocked women’s suffrage, and the Supreme Court ruled in favor of women’s subordination. Because women, like children, were understood to be not fully responsible, in criminal trials they were sometimes treated less harshly than men—especially in capital cases. Indeed, subordination to husbands remained a pillar of family law. And whether rich or poor, the marital bond meant bondage for some wives, where they surrendered not only their property rights but also personal and religious liberty. As for people of color, inclusion of women within the doctrine that all “are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights” proved a deeply challenging proposition.

Not “Radio Nowhere”

2019 ◽  
pp. 204-224
Author(s):  
Micaela di Leonardo
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Gun Control ◽  
Differential Treatment ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Police Violence ◽  
Dna Evidence ◽  
Black Offenders ◽  
History Of ◽  
The U.S

Chapter 6 lays out the TJMS’s history of dealing extensively and as an activist counterpubic node with the racism baked into the U.S. criminal justice system, including the differential treatment of whites versus all people of color—as in media neglect of the cases of missing black girls and women. It also lays out TJMS’s militant gun-control stance and opposition to the NRA. It documents their reactions to black offenders, and to innocent African Americans released from prison because of DNA evidence. It lays out TJMS coverage of and activism for victims of police violence/racist criminal justice Sean Bell, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Melissa Alexander, and Michael Brown.

Documenting Citizenship

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Travel ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
State Laws ◽  
Department Of State ◽  
Dred Scott ◽  
Free People ◽  
The U.S

Chapter 4 tells the story of how, between 1834 and the 1860s, the U.S. Department of State refused to grant free people of color official passports for international travel. During a period when passport policy was still nascent, by rejecting black applicants, the federal government illustrated how travel and citizenship were inextricably linked in the United States. At the same time that African Americans could not get passports, state laws and customs required some people of color to carry a series of identification papers best thought of as racialized surveillance documents, including slave passes, black sailors’ passports, and free papers. Demonstrating how fundamentally raced the idea of carrying papers was to white Americans, when white people traveled abroad, they consistently grumbled about having to show their papers. For colored travelers, however, the passport was an object of desire because it denoted U.S. citizenship. In the late 1840s and early 1850s, by pushing the federal government to address racial restrictions for acquiring the U.S. passport, colored travelers rendered the question of black citizenship a matter of national import almost a decade before the 1857 Dred Scott decision did the same.

Law and Liberty, 1830–1860

2020 ◽  
pp. 27-48
Author(s):  
Donald G. Nieman
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Dred Scott ◽  
The North ◽  
Due Process Of Law ◽  
Political Groups ◽  
Equal Citizenship

This chapter examines the rise of radical abolitionism in the 1820s and 1830s as well as the emergence of the Colored Convention movement in the North that challenged slavery and discrimination against free blacks. African Americans as well as white abolitionists developed an interpretation of the Constitution that employed republicanism, due process of law, and equal citizenship to challenge slavery and discrimination. With the acquisition of vast territories in the Southwest from Mexico in the late 1840s, many northerners feared that slavery would expand and strengthen southern political power. New political groups, notably the Republican Party, grew in strength and embraced antislavery constitutional ideas. A southern-dominated Supreme Court responded in the Dred Scott case, ruling that African Americans were not citizens and that Congress lacked authority to exclude slavery from the territories. Republican victory in 1860 signaled the triumph of antislavery constitutional ideas and precipitated secession.

Antitrust: U.S. Supreme Court Affirms FTC Jurisdiction but Vacates Scope of Analysis on CDA Policy

1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-198
Author(s):  
Joseph R. Zakhary
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Federal Trade Commission ◽  
Ninth Circuit ◽  
Court Of Appeals ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Rule Of Reason ◽  
Antitrust Analysis ◽  
Business Financing ◽  
The U.S

In California Dental Association v. FTC, 119 S. Ct. 1604 (1999), the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that a nonprofit affiliation of dentists violated section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTCA), 15 U.S.C.A. § 45 (1998), which prohibits unfair competition. The Court examined two issues: (1) the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) jurisdiction over the California Dental Association (CDA); and (2) the proper scope of antitrust analysis. The Court unanimously held that CDA was subject to FTC's jurisdiction, but split 5-4 in its finding that the district court's use of abbreviated rule-of-reason analysis was inappropriate.CDA is a voluntary, nonprofit association of local dental societies. It boasts approximately 19,000 members, who constitute roughly threequarters of the dentists practicing in California. Although a nonprofit, CDA includes for-profit subsidiaries that financially benefit CDA members. CDA gives its members access to insurance and business financing, and lobbies and litigates on their behalf. Members also benefit from CDA marketing and public relations campaigns.

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