Desegregation/Integration

Background

In the aftermath of the American Civil War, Congress proposed, and the states ratified, three amendments to the Constitution to remedy some of the underlying inequities that had not been resolved by the military conflict. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, sometimes referred to as the “Reconstruction amendments,” sought to rebut some of the discrimination that had been acknowledged since the decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), which held that people of African descent who had been brought to the United States in slavery, and their descendents, were not citizens and were not protected by the Constitution.

The Thirteenth Amendment, which was proposed and ratified in 1865, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude. The Fourteenth Amendment, proposed in 1866 and ratified in 1868, contained a citizenship clause that overturned the Dred Scott decision, extending citizenship to all born in the United States, and also included equal protection and due process clauses that required all states to provide equal protection under law to all citizens and defined safeguards necessary to protect these rights. The Fifteenth Amendment, proposed in 1869 and ratified in 1870, prohibited any governmental entity from denying citizens the right to vote based on their race, color, or previous condition of servitude. While these constitutional amendments in theory extended equal rights to all citizens, including African Americans, in practice this was not the case, with the situation being especially difficult in the former slave states.

Despite the protections and rights afforded all citizens by the Reconstruction amendments, authorities in the southern states soon began to pass legislation and to enact policies and procedures that segregated blacks and whites. The U.S. Supreme Court, in the matter of Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), held that state laws requiring separate but equal accommodations for African Americans and Caucasians on trains [Page 687]via different railroad cars were constitutional. In Berea College v. Kentucky, 211 U.S. 45 (1908), the Supreme Court upheld a statute that barred a private institution from teaching black and white students in an integrated setting. The combination of the Dred Scott and Berea College rulings emboldened many legislatures, especially those in the south, to pass a variety of laws that restricted African Americans from a variety of activities.

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