Introduction Mapping the Fault Lines
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PLESSY V. FERGUSON (1896) ORIGINS of the CASE in 1892, Homer Plessy Took a Seat in the “Whites Only” Car of a Train and Refused to Move
PLESSY v. FERGUSON (1896) ORIGINS OF THE CASE In 1892, Homer Plessy took a seat in the “Whites Only” car of a train and refused to move. He was arrested, tried, and convicted in the District Court of New Orleans for breaking Louisiana’s segregation law. Plessy appealed, claiming that he had been denied equal protection under the law. The Supreme Court handed down its decision on May 18, 1896. THE RULING The Court ruled that separate-but-equal facilities for blacks and whites did not violate the Constitution. LEGAL REASONING CALIFORNIA STANDARDS Plessy claimed that segregation violated his right to 11.10.2 Examine and analyze the key events, policies, and court cases in the evolution of civil rights, including Dred Scott v. equal protection under the law. Moreover he claimed Sandford, Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education, that, being “of mixed descent,” he was entitled to “every Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, and California Proposition 209. recognition, right, privilege and immunity secured to HI 3 Students interpret past events and issues within the context the citizens of the United States of the white race.” in which an event unfolded rather than solely in terms of pres- Justice Henry B. Brown, writing for the majority, ruled: ent-day norms and values. “ The object of the [Fourteenth] amendment was LEGAL SOURCES . undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but . it could not have LEGISLATION been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political U.S. -
Can Money Whiten? Exploring Race Practice in Colonial Venezuela and Its Implications for Contemporary Race Discourse
Michigan Journal of Race and Law Volume 3 1998 Can Money Whiten? Exploring Race Practice in Colonial Venezuela and Its Implications for Contemporary Race Discourse Estelle T. Lau State University of New York at Buffalo Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjrl Part of the Comparative and Foreign Law Commons, Law and Race Commons, Law and Society Commons, and the Legal History Commons Recommended Citation Estelle T. Lau, Can Money Whiten? Exploring Race Practice in Colonial Venezuela and Its Implications for Contemporary Race Discourse, 3 MICH. J. RACE & L. 417 (1998). Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjrl/vol3/iss2/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Michigan Journal of Race and Law by an authorized editor of University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CAN MONEY WHITEN? EXPLORING RACE PRACTICE IN COLONIAL VENEZUELA AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR CONTEMPORARY RACE DISCOURSE Estelle T. Lau* The Gracias al Sacar, a fascinating and seemingly inconceivable practice in eighteenth century colonial Venezuela, allowed certain individuals of mixed Black and White ancestry to purchase "Whiteness" from their King. The author exposes the irony of this system, developed in a society obsessed with "natural" ordering that labeled individuals according to their precise racial ancestry. While recognizing that the Gracias al Sacar provided opportunities for advancement and an avenue for material and social struggle, the author argues that it also justified the persistence of racial hierarchy. -
Historical Origins of the One-Drop Racial Rule in the United States
Historical Origins of the One-Drop Racial Rule in the United States Winthrop D. Jordan1 Edited by Paul Spickard2 Editor’s Note Winthrop Jordan was one of the most honored US historians of the second half of the twentieth century. His subjects were race, gender, sex, slavery, and religion, and he wrote almost exclusively about the early centuries of American history. One of his first published articles, “American Chiaroscuro: The Status and Definition of Mulattoes in the British Colonies” (1962), may be considered an intellectual forerunner of multiracial studies, as it described the high degree of social and sexual mixing that occurred in the early centuries between Africans and Europeans in what later became the United States, and hinted at the subtle racial positionings of mixed people in those years.3 Jordan’s first book, White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812, was published in 1968 at the height of the Civil Rights Movement era. The product of years of painstaking archival research, attentive to the nuances of the thousands of documents that are its sources, and written in sparkling prose, White over Black showed as no previous book had done the subtle psycho-social origins of the American racial caste system.4 It won the National Book Award, the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize, the Bancroft Prize, the Parkman Prize, and other honors. It has never been out of print since, and it remains a staple of the graduate school curriculum for American historians and scholars of ethnic studies. In 2005, the eminent public intellectual Gerald Early, at the request of the African American magazine American Legacy, listed what he believed to be the ten most influential books on African American history. -
Than Segregation, Racial Identity: the Neglected Question in Plessy V
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice Volume 10 | Issue 1 Article 3 Spring 4-1-2004 MORE THAN SEGREGATION, RACIAL IDENTITY: THE NEGLECTED QUESTION IN PLESSY V. FERGUSON Thomas J. Davis Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, and the Legal History Commons Recommended Citation Thomas J. Davis, MORE THAN SEGREGATION, RACIAL IDENTITY: THE NEGLECTED QUESTION IN PLESSY V. FERGUSON, 10 Wash. & Lee Race & Ethnic Anc. L. J. 1 (2004). Available at: https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol10/iss1/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice at Washington & Lee University School of Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice by an authorized editor of Washington & Lee University School of Law Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. MORE THAN SEGREGATION, RACIAL IDENTITY: THE NEGLECTED QUESTION IN PLESSY V. FERGUSON Thomas J. Davis* I. INTRODUCTION The U.S. Supreme Court's 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson' has long stood as an ignominious marker in U.S. law, symbolizing the nation's highest legal sanction for the physical separation by race of persons in the United States. In ruling against thirty-four-year-old New Orleans shoemaker Homer Adolph Plessy's challenge to Louisiana's Separate Railway Act of 1890,2 the Court majority declared that we think the enforced separation of the races, as applied to the internal commerce of the state, neither abridges the privileges or immunities of the colored man, deprives him of his property without due process of law, nor denies him the equal protection of the laws, within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.3 One commentator on the Court's treatment of African-American civil rights cast the Plessy decision as "the climactic Supreme Court pronouncement on segregated institutions."4 Historian C. -
The Zacuto Complex: on Reading the Jews in South Africa
Richard Mendelsohn, Milton Shain. The Jews in South Africa: An Illustrated History. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2008. x + 234 pp. $31.95, cloth, ISBN 978-1-86842-281-4. Reviewed by Jonathan Judaken Published on H-Judaic (August, 2009) Commissioned by Jason Kalman (Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion) While the frst Jews to officially settle in South hand, Europeans colonized him in the name of Africa did so in the early nineteenth century, the the same basic ideas that justified European ex‐ history of their antecedents is much longer. They pansion and exploitation, notions that we can include Abraham ben Samuel Zacuto, distin‐ name in one word: racism. The "Zacuto complex," guished astronomer and astrologist at the Univer‐ as I want to call it, has played out through most of sity of Salamanca prior to the expulsion of the the history of Jews in South Africa, as this won‐ Jews from Spain in 1492. His astrological tables derful book demonstrates. were published in Hebrew, and then translated The Jews in South Africa, by two of the lead‐ into Latin, and then into Spanish. They were used ing living historians of South Africa’s Jewish past, by Christopher Columbus, and more importantly is the frst general history of South African Jewry by Vasco da Gama, for whom he also selected the in over ffty years. It is written in lively prose, scientific instruments and joined on his voyage to sumptuously illustrated, and includes rare photo‐ Africa.Zacuto, thereby, “was probably the frst Jew graphs as well as documents culled from the ar‐ to land on South African soil when, in mid-No‐ chives, which are inserted into offset “boxes” that vember 1497, the Da Gama party went ashore at help illuminate the forces at work in South St Helena Bay on the Cape west coast” (p. -
Racial Migration and the One-Drop Rule, 1600–1860
SHARFSTEIN_4FMT 2/22/2007 10:11:09 AM Article Crossing the Color Line: Racial Migration and the One-Drop Rule, 1600–1860 Daniel J. Sharfstein† “It ain’t no lie, it’s a natural fact, / You could have been colored without being so black . .” —Sung by deck hands, Auburn, Alabama, 1915–161 “They are our enemies; we marry them.” —African Proverb2 INTRODUCTION: THE BRIDE WORE BLACK In 1819 a Scotsman named James Flint crossed the Atlan- tic Ocean, made his way from New York to Pittsburgh, sailed down the Ohio, and settled for eighteen months in Jefferson- ville, Indiana, just opposite Louisville, Kentucky. His letters † Samuel I. Golieb Fellow in Legal History, New York University School of Law. J.D. 2000, Yale Law School. Special thanks to R.B. Bernstein, Steven Biel, Paulette Caldwell, Kristin Collins, Daniel Coquillette, Christine Desan, Charles Donahue, Mary Dudziak, Crystal Feimster, Harold Forsythe, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Glenda Gilmore, Robert W. Gordon, Jonathan Hanson, Paul Heinegg, Helen Hershkoff, Carissa Hessick, Morton Horwitz, Daniel Hulse- bosch, Jane Kamensky, J. Andrew Kent, Harold Hongju Koh, Matthew Lind- say, Kenneth Mack, Ann Mikkelsen, William E. Nelson, Kunal Parker, Nicho- las Parrillo, Joseph Pearce, Jr., Seth Rockman, Carol Rose, Peter Schuck, David Seipp, Jed Shugerman, Werner Sollors, Simon Stern, Diana Williams, and Michael Willrich. The Legal History Colloquium at New York University School of Law and the Harvard Legal History Colloquium provided invaluable feedback. This Article would not have been possible without the hard work of Ashley Ewald, Sara Youn, and the staff of the Minnesota Law Review, as well as the generous support of the Raoul Berger-Mark DeWolfe Howe Fellowship at Harvard Law School and the National Endowment for the Humanities. -
Why the Supreme Court Lied in Plessy
Volume 52 Issue 3 Article 1 2007 Why the Supreme Court Lied in Plessy David S. Bogen Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/vlr Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Common Law Commons, Constitutional Law Commons, and the Legal History Commons Recommended Citation David S. Bogen, Why the Supreme Court Lied in Plessy, 52 Vill. L. Rev. 411 (2007). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/vlr/vol52/iss3/1 This Lecture is brought to you for free and open access by Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Villanova Law Review by an authorized editor of Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law Digital Repository. Bogen: Why the Supreme Court Lied in Plessy VILLANOVA LAW REVIEW VOLUME 52 2007 NUMBER 3 Reuschlein Lecture WHY THE SUPREME COURT LIED IN PLESSY DAVID S. BOGEN* 1. INTRODUCTION p LESSY v. Ferguson' is high on the list of the most reviled decisions of the Supreme Court, mentioned in the same breath as Dred Scott v. Sandford.2 It has a number of unfortunate statements 3 and the decision * Harold Gill Reuschlein Visiting Professor, Villanova University School of Law, Professor Emeritus of Law, University of Maryland School of Law. B.A. 1962, LL.B. 1965, Harvard University; LL.M., 1967, New York University. I would like to thank Villanova for the opportunity afforded by the Reuschlein professorship and the University of Maryland for a summer grant. The assistance of the staff at the Villanova University School of Law Library, particularly Amy Spare, and the University of Maryland School of Law Thurgood Marshall Library, particularly Maxine Grosshans, was indispensable, as was my research assistant, Justin Browne, University of Maryland class of 2008. -
Free People of Color and Blood Purity in Colonial Spanish American Legislation
SLAVE BUT NOT CITIZEN: FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR AND BLOOD PURITY IN COLONIAL SPANISH AMERICAN LEGISLATION ESCLAVO PERO NO CIUDADANO: LIBRES DE COLOR Y PUREZA DE SANGRE EN LA LEGISLACION COLONIAL EN LA AMERICA HISPANA ALINE HELG Université de Genève Resumen En 1946 el sociólogo Frank Tannenbaum ofreció una imagen positiva de la esclavitud en América Latina. Desde entonces, sus consideraciones respecto a la esclavitud han sido replanteadas. Sin embargo, se ha prestado poca atención a su afirmación de que una vez emancipados, los antiguos esclavos se convirtieron en ciudadanos. En este artículo analizamos la posición de la gente libre de color en la legislación colonial en la América hispana que les discriminaba y les impedía la posibilidad de ocupar un cargo en las instituciones civiles, militares y eclesiásticas mediante el requisito legal de la pureza de sangre. Este tipo de exclusiones raciales fueron suprimidas en los inicios del proceso de independencia de la América hispana continental pero se mantuvieron vigentes en Cuba y en Puerto Rico hasta la década de 1880. Palabras clave: Esclavitud, pureza de sangre, ciudadanía, América Latina. Abstract In 1946, sociologist Frank Tannenbaum offered a positive image of Latin America’s sla- ve. Since then, his views on slavery have been revised, but little attention has been paid to his claim that once freed, former slaves became citizens. This article focuses on the position of free people of color in colonial Spanish American law, which discriminated against them and barred them from civil, military and church positions through the legal requirement of blood purity. Such racial exclusions were lifted at the onset of continental Spanish America’s independence process, but were in force in Cuba and Puerto Rico until the 1880s. -
Unsuspecting
UNSUSPECTING DAVID SCHRAUB* INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................... 362 I. SUSPECT STASIS .................................................................................. 366 A. The Indicia of Suspectness ........................................................... 367 B. The Indicia’s Impermanence ....................................................... 372 1. The Carolene Factors ............................................................ 372 2. The Rodriguez Factors ........................................................... 376 3. Immutability and Irrelevancy ................................................ 378 a. Immutability .................................................................... 378 b. Irrelevancy ...................................................................... 381 II. TRANSIENT IN THEORY, CONCRETE IN FACT: WHY HAVEN’T CLASSES BEEN UNSUSPECTED? ........................................................... 383 A. Lack of Opportunity ..................................................................... 384 B. Lack of Incentive .......................................................................... 389 C. Lack of Clarity ............................................................................. 393 III. AGAINST PERPETUAL SUSPECT CLASSES ............................................ 396 A. Democratic Tensions ................................................................... 396 B. Suspect Classification as Zero-Sum ........................................... -
The Night Watchman
3/16/2021 The History and the Literature: The Night Watchman Diane and Stan Henderson OLLI at the University of Cincinnati March 16, 2021 For a PDF of these slides, please email [email protected] 3/16/2021 The History OVERVIEW • A Grim Reckoning • The Land Was Already Occupied • Land and Purity of the Blood • Early America: Treaties and Conflict • The American Origin Story • Jackson: The Indians Must Go • War or Policy: It’s All the Same • Termination: The Final Solution • A New Reckoning 3/16/2021 • “Our nation was born in genocide.… We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this Martin Luther King, Jr. shameful episode.” Settler Colonialism • Increasingly, historians are seeing the growth of the US as a kind of colonialism, specifically, settler colonialism • The hordes of settlers who moved west from the Atlantic—whether immigrants or people seeking better circumstances—were—colonizing, making the land their own • Indigenous peoples already there were not a part of the colonists’ plans: they were “others” who needed to move or be moved or worse 3/16/2021 Quick Test • Envision the map of the US at the time of independence • Most likely you thought of an approximation of the US as it looks today • A Rorschach of unconscious “manifest destiny” • Implication that America was terra nullius, a land without people and -
Painting Outside of the Lines: How Race Assignment Can Be Rethought Through Art
Gettysburg Social Sciences Review Volume 5 Issue 1 Article 10 2021 Painting Outside of the Lines: How Race Assignment can be Rethought Through Art Giovanni Mella-Velazquez Emory University Follow this and additional works at: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/gssr Part of the African American Studies Commons, American Art and Architecture Commons, Caribbean Languages and Societies Commons, Contemporary Art Commons, Ethnic Studies Commons, Latina/o Studies Commons, Modern Art and Architecture Commons, Painting Commons, and the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons Share feedback about the accessibility of this item. Recommended Citation Mella-Velazquez, Giovanni (2021) "Painting Outside of the Lines: How Race Assignment can be Rethought Through Art," Gettysburg Social Sciences Review: Vol. 5 : Iss. 1 , Article 10. Available at: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/gssr/vol5/iss1/10 This open access article is brought to you by The Cupola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College. It has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of The Cupola. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Painting Outside of the Lines: How Race Assignment can be Rethought Through Art Abstract For centuries art has been used to make us think about our own human experiences. Unfortunately, works usually reflect the era which they were painted in; this has led to various artists showing, maintaining, and therefore reinforcing racist thoughts in our cultures. Art can be used to create a new narrative for our race assignments and their meanings. The idea of loving one's roots has been prevalent in many cultures, but in art form a disconnect between history and the everyday experience can arise which could miss the mark in helping us redefine our own ace.r Therefore, artwork which empowers the present identity of marginalized people’s own race will have a greater appeal and connection to these people. -
UC Irvine Flashpoints
UC Irvine FlashPoints Title The Fear of French Negroes: Transcolonial Collaboration in the Revolutionary Americas Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3j476038 ISBN 9780520271128 Author Johnson, Sara E. Publication Date 2012-09-15 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California The Fear of French Negroes Transcolonial Collaboration in the Revolutionary Americas Sara E. Johnson university of california press Berkeley • Los Angeles • London The Fear of French Negroes flashpoints The series solicits books that consider literature beyond strictly national and disciplin- ary frameworks, distinguished both by their historical grounding and their theoretical and conceptual strength. We seek studies that engage theory without losing touch with history and work historically without falling into uncritical positivism. FlashPoints aims for a broad audience within the humanities and the social sciences concerned with mo- ments of cultural emergence and transformation. In a Benjaminian mode, FlashPoints is interested in how literature contributes to forming new constellations of culture and history and in how such formations function critically and politically in the present. Available online at http://repositories.cdlib.org/ucpress. Series Editors: Ali Behdad (Comparative Literature and English, UCLA); Judith Butler (Rhetoric and Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley), Founding Editor; Edward Dimendberg (Film & Media Studies, UC Irvine), Coordinator; Catherine Gallagher (English, UC Berkeley), Founding Editor; Jody Greene (Literature, UC Santa Cruz); Susan Gillman (Literature, UC Santa Cruz); Richard Terdiman (Literature, UC Santa Cruz) 1. On Pain of Speech: Fantasies of the First Order and the Literary Rant, by Dina Al-Kassim 2. Moses and Multiculturalism, by Barbara Johnson, with a foreword by Barbara Rietveld 3.