Constitution, the Court, and Race

¶ … Constitution, the Court, and Race Relations

How did the Constitution initially recognize the relations between Whites and Blacks in the late 18th century?

Although the Declaration of Independence states that "All men are created equal," it really meant all those except those of color (and women). One issue in writing the Constitution was how to count slaves. If slaves were counted equally with free persons, then southern states would get more Congressional seats than the northern states, where there weren't as many slaves. In addition, those states with many slaves would pay more taxes. The compromise finally reached was that for census person, a slave would count as 3/5 of a person. This made it very clear that slaves were not considered as full human beings. Indentured servants counted as whole people, and Native Americans did not count at all.

The Constitution declared that no slaves could be imported after 1808 and that all slaves after that time would have to be the result of slave population growth within the United States, but this did not end slavery. It also established that escaped slaves must be returned to their owners. It also specified that no Constitutional amendments could be made to these rules prior to 1808. This guaranteed slave-owners status quo for 20 years after the Constitution was approved.

What were the changes, through Supreme Court interpretations, in the first half of the 19th century?

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 (3) was passed by Congress in response to controversy over the entrance of Missouri to the United States as a state. The decision attempted to keep the number of slave states and free states in the United States equal, to try to stem a growing national crisis over whether slavery should be allowed or not. This rule, combined with earlier provisions in the Constitution, led to the Dredd Scott Decision by the Supreme court. In this ruling, the Supreme Court declared that no Black could ever be a citizen of the United States. Dredd Scott was a man who had lived as a free Black in both Illinois and Wisconsin, but was moving back to Missouri, a slave state (3). The Supreme Court rules that because Scott was a Black man, he was not a citizen and had no legal rights. Roger B. Taney, Chief Justice, wrote, "The framers of the Constitution, believed that blacks had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro [sic] might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever profit could be made by it." (3). He declared that the words "All men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence did not refer to Black men. In fact many of the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence went on to write the Constitution, and the provisions for the counting of slaves in the census - counting each slave as 3/5 of a person - backed Taney's words up (PBS, no date).

This ruling emphasized the position that slaves were chattel, like horses and cows, and not people with the rights and privileges given to citizens. Scott had enjoyed the status of a free person in Wisconsin and Illinois and attempted to maintain that status in Missouri.

What changes were written into the Constitution and how were they interpreted in the last half of the 19th century?

After the Civil War, the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution were added. These amendments were vital to the stability of the country, because they made the abolition of slavery the law of the land. The 13th amendment specifically banned slavery (Russell, 2003). In 1968 the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. That amendment decreed that no state shall "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" (p. 148).

While the Civil War freed slaves, at the end of the Reconstruction in 1877, when Whites regained power, the country entered an era of active discrimination and systematic segregation by Whites against African-Americans. However, the doctrine of "states' rights," also stemming from the Constitution, encouraged the southern states to believe that they could deal with their Negro residents as they chose, as only slavery had been specifically banned. They began imposing more and more restrictive rules on their Black residents. The Ku Klux Klan formed after the federally managed "Reconstruction" ended. The KKK terrorized Blacks who violated the views of the local Whites regarding how Blacks should behave and conduct themselves.

At the end of the 19th century, in the ruling Plessy vs. Ferguson (p. 133), the Supreme Court ruled that a court ruling could not force equality if one race were inferior to the other, and refused to reverse segregation rules. This ruling justified all sorts of horrific practices, including segregated schools, which were separate but often not equal. Typically these schools did not have libraries, and typically the textbooks were outdated textbooks sent to the Black schools after the White schools had replaced them with newer, more up-to-date ones. It is hard today to understand how the Supreme Court came to its Plessy vs. Ferguson conclusions given the very explicit statements in the 14th Amendment. However, the Court concluded that the 14th Amendment did not require that everyone be treated the same all the time. It allowed local and state authorities to continue to require Blacks to use separate cars on the trains, separate waiting rooms for public transportation, etc. It wasn't until 1954 with the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that the Supreme Court declared that "separate" was inherently unequal.

What was the state of race relations at the turn of the century?

In spite of the passage of the 15th Amendment guaranteeing the right to vote, African-Americans were routinely blocked from voting by poll taxes, literacy tests given to them but not White voters and outright intimidation (2). "Jim Crow" laws continued to be passed throughout the southern states to reinforce segregation. Blacks had to attend special schools, sit in special waiting rooms, use different restrooms and public water fountains, and had to sit in separate sections in most public places. By the early 20th century these laws were fully entrenched and supported by the Supreme Court's Plessy vs. Ferguson ruling. Blacks were not guaranteed free and equal education. The KKK continued to terrorize the Black population, and lynchings were common.