Civil Rights Case Study

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1. Explain the Struggle for Civil Rights. Throughout history, the line dividing individual rights and legal racial discrimination (against African Americans) has been blurred. In 1868, the equal protection clause was implemented under the addition of the fourteenth amendment to the constitution. The clause guaranteed “equal protection of the laws”. As a result, many Americans pushed for racial equality through political movements. African Americans constantly struggled with full citizenship rights; and, by accepting slavery, the founders created a structure that did not completely implement the “Blessings of Liberty” (as stated in the Constitution). Women also faced a similar struggle before the early 1900s.

2. Describe the connection between
The military integrated racially diverse soldiers to prove to the South that they had nothing to fear. The Commission realized that the national government had no right in implementing civil rights legislation, and it suggested that the legislation be tied to the commerce clause of Article I (even though the discrimination was not related to interstate commerce). Before the war began, the Supreme Court enacted stricter criteria for the “separate but equal” rule. Several discrimination cases resulted in a ruling that the practice of discrimination against African Americans was “state action with the meaning of the Fifteenth Amendment”. Eventually, the Supreme Court began to take more cases on appeal, and in 1952, the Court challenged the constitutionality of school segregation. In the infamous Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case, Oliver Brown sent his children to an all-white summer school against local segregation rules and the state law. As expected, Brown was turned away and he took his problem to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Astonishingly, the courts altered the constitutional framework, by ruling that states could no longer use race as discriminatory criteria in law, and the national government was obligated to intercede with stringent regulatory policies against any acts of discrimination by private

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