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The Dark Past: The US Supreme Court and African Americans, 1800-2015

The Dark Past: The US Supreme Court and African Americans, 1800-2015

Author: William M. Wiecek
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780197654439
Published In: December 2024
Format: Hardback
Jurisdiction: ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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Contents

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For most of its existence, the US Supreme Court has sustained slavery, racial discrimination, segregation, racial inequality, and white preference through constitutional interpretation and legal doctrine. During America's first two centuries, slavery was the law of the land. The Court initially avoided challenging it, and in 1857, it seemed that the justices were committed to defending it with the disastrous Dred Scott decision, which denied that Black Americans could claim any rights under the Constitution. The Court also failed to sustain Congress's effort to accord rights and status to Black Americans during Reconstruction, and it accepted white supremacy in the 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, which ratified the doctrine of "separate but equal." It did better in the Civil Rights Era, 1954-1972, but then again retreated in the face of political backlash.

The Dark Past offers a historical overview and interpretive guide to all the major cases decided by US Supreme Court that have affected the freedom and rights of Black Americans since 1800. It lends coherence to what could otherwise be a disjointed chronicle of cases and connects the events of the past to the current era of racial inequality-most recently exhibited in the Shelby County v. Holder (2015) decision, which hobbled the Voting Rights Act. Throughout the six hundred volumes of the United States Reports the justices have almost never alluded to the reality of racism or used words that denote it. Only once has the phrase "white supremacy" appeared in an opinion of the Court, and only thirty or so times has a member of the Court referred to "racism." The Dark Past, on the other hand, incorporates structural racism as a principal definition of inequality in the contemporary Black legal experience as it updates and enlarges our understanding of how the legal foundations of inequality structure American society.

Prologue

Chapter 1: The Antebellum Court, 1800-1861

Chapter 2: Reconstruction and the Supreme Court, 1861-1880

Chapter 3: Redemption, 1880-1900

Chapter 4: The Nadir and the Blue Hour, 1900-1920

Chapter 5: Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Between the Wars, 1920-1940

Chapter 6: War and Cold War, 1941-1953

Chapter 7: The Second Reconstruction, 1954-1971

Chapter 8: Right Turn, 1960-1980

Chapter 9: The Resegregation of America's Schools

Chapter 10: Affirmative Action

Chapter 11: Redemption Redux, 1972-2015