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TWO DECISIONS IN THE FIGHT FOR EQUALITY AND JUSTICEPreview

In Memory of May and the Constitutionality of State Laws and Segregation until 1954, Brown V Board of Education … the struggle for equality and justice continues to be 

Lonnie Bunch, museum director, historian, lecturer, and author, is proud to present A Page from Our American Story, a regular on-line series for Museum supporters. It will showcase individuals and events in the African American experience, placing these stories in the context of a larger story — our American story.

A Page From Our American Story

This month, as schoolchildren across the nation look forward to the beginning of summer vacation, the National Museum of African American History and Culture marks the anniversaries of two landmark United States Supreme Court decisions that profoundly impacted access to education – one that legally sanctioned an era of appalling discrimination, and the second that resulted in a major step toward equality and justice for African Americans.

The first case was the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which upheld the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities. It came about after the state of Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act in 1890, which mandated separate railway cars for blacks and whites. In response, a group of prominent black, white, and Creole New Orleans residents formed the Comité des Citoyens (Committee of Citizens) to fight for repeal of the law.

The Comité recruited Homer Plessy, a mixed-race man, to take part in a case challenging the law. On June 7, 1892, Plessy bought a first-class ticket on an East Louisiana Railroad train in New Orleans and took a seat in a “whites only” car. He was asked to move to the blacks-only car, arrested when he refused, and remanded for trial. He was convicted and ordered to pay a $25 fine. Upon appeal, the Supreme Court of Louisiana upheld the ruling, setting the stage for a challenge in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Oral arguments in Plessy v. Ferguson were held before the Supreme Court on April 13, 1896. Plessy’s attorneys built his case upon the violation of his rights under the Thirteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits slavery, and the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees equal rights and the protection of those rights to all U.S citizens.

In the seven-to-one decision handed down on May 18, 1896, the Court rejected Plessy’s arguments, holding that as long as the separate facilities for the separate races were equal, segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote a scathing dissent in which he predicted the court’s decision would become as infamous as the notorious 1857Dred Scott ruling that no African American, free or slave, could claim U.S. citizenship or petition the court for their freedom.

The impacts of the “separate but equal” doctrine established by Plessy ruling were immediate and far-reaching – erasing legislative achievements of the Reconstruction Era, legitimizing state laws establishing racial segregation in the South (the Jim Crow system), and inspiring the spread of segregation laws and practices northward. These developments exacerbated already vast differences in funding for segregated school systems. As with other segregated facilities and institutions, schools for African Americans were consistently inferior to those for whites, contradicting the claims of “separate but equal” underlying the Plessy decision.

“Separate but equal” remained the standard doctrine in U.S. law until the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, in which the Court ruled that segregation in public education was unconstitutional. The case began in 1951 as a class action suit filed in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas that called on the city’s Board of Education to reverse its policy of racial segregation. It was initiated by the Topeka chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the plaintiffs were 13 African American parents on behalf of their children. The named plaintiff was Oliver L. Brown, a welder and an assistant pastor at his local church, whose daughter had to walk six blocks to her school bus stop to ride to her segregated black school one mile away, while a white school was located just seven blocks from her house.

Citing the precedent set in Plessy, the District Court ruled in favor of the Board of Education, leading the plaintiffs to mount a U.S. Supreme Court challenge. The Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education combined the Brown case and four similar cases from various states, and NAACP Chief Counsel Thurgood Marshall, later appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, lead the team of attorneys that argued the case for the plaintiffs.

The Court heard the case in spring 1953 but was unable to decide the issue, and asked to rehear the case in fall 1953 at the urging of Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter, who wanted to build a consensus for an opinion outlawing segregation. After the September 1953 death of Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson, who had been a major obstacle to securing such an opinion, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren as Chief Justice. Warren told the justices that the Court had to overrule Plessy unanimously to head off massive Southern resistance, eventually convincing the remaining holdouts on the Court. Warren himself drafted the basic opinion, circulating and revising it until all the justices endorsed it.

On May 17, 1954, the Court handed down its unanimous 9-0 decision overturning Plessy as it applied to public education, stating that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” As a result, racial segregation laws were declared in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, paving the way for integration and winning a major victory for the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement.

Many people today may not remember the details of these two landmark cases in the struggle for equality and justice. The National Museum of African American History and Culture was founded to ensure that this story and other important chapters in the African American experience are never forgotten. When the Museum opens its doors on September 24, 2016, we will bring major milestones like Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education to life through compelling interactive exhibitions and our unsurpassed permanent collection of African American historical artifacts, including an entire Jim Crow-era segregated railway car and the dining room that was used by Brown family and NAACP Legal Defense Fund during preparation for the Brown case.

All the best,

Lonnie G. Bunch III
Founding Director
P.S. We can only reach our $270 million goal with your help. I hope you will consider becoming a Charter Member today.

To read past Our American Stories, visit our archives.

In 1934, the act was amended to:

• Exclude parental abductions of their own minor children from federal jurisdiction Wikipedia.
• Expand penalties to include the death penalty in cases where the victim was not released unharmed Wikipedia.

These changes reflected a balance between preventing federal overreach in family-related cases and maintaining the law’s deterrent effect against interstate kidnapping.

Legal Purpose

The Lindbergh Law’s core provision (18 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)) criminalizes transporting a kidnapped person in interstate or foreign commerce, regardless of whether the victim was alive at the time of crossing. It also created a 24-hour rebuttable presumption that if a victim is not released within 24 hours of abduction, they have likely been transported across state lines Crime Museum.

Significance

The 1934 amendments reinforced the law’s role as a national tool against interstate kidnapping, ensuring that kidnappers could not simply vanish across state lines. The death penalty provision was intended to deter the most heinous kidnappings, especially those resulting in death Wikipedia+1.

In short, the Lindbergh Act of 1934 was a legislative refinement of the 1932 Federal Kidnapping Act, tightening jurisdictional limits and expanding penalties to address the public’s outrage over the Lindbergh kidnapping and to strengthen federal law enforcement’s ability to combat interstate crime.

The ABA council voted to pause enforcement of Standard 206 — the rule requiring accredited law schools to show a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. This suspension was explicitly linked to the Trump administration’s crackdown on DEI and pressure from 21 Republican attorneys general.

The council voted to remove the DEI requirement from accreditation, citing political pressure, legal uncertainty, and threats to the ABA’s status as the national accreditor. This is the closest thing to “tossing DEI out.” However, the change is not final until the ABA House of Delegates reviews it — likely in 2027.

This affects accreditation — not all ABA DEI activity

The vote eliminates one specific rule tied to accreditation. It does not ban DEI programs within the ABA, law schools, or the legal profession. It does, however, remove the only mandatory DEI requirement law schools faced from the accreditor.

Why this happened

Sources consistently cite:

• Federal pressure from the Trump administration
• State pressure (TX, FL, AL decertifying the ABA)
• Legal challenges after the Supreme Court’s affirmative‑action ruling
• Internal fear that keeping the rule would cost the ABA its accrediting authority

What this means … in practice

~ Law schools will no longer risk accreditation for failing to meet DEI benchmarks.

~ Diversity efforts will become optional rather than required.

~ States hostile to DEI are already using this to weaken ABA authority.

~ The legal profession, already one of the least diverse, may see slowed progress in representation.

Bottom line: This is the part people often skip: DEI rules were never about ability. They were about counteracting barriers. Removing those rules doesn’t make anyone less capable — it just removes oversight guardrails that forced institutions to confront bias, access gaps, and exclusion.

Sources: The Blaze, Inside Higher Ed, AI

DEI came close to changing opportunities, but it only really helped some white women. The pre-disposed biases of the past are now an ugly reminder and often wicked thing, coming back… that DEI and Affirmative Action were always about race and gender, and that people of color and some white women needed help getting a job, not about that, pointing to the facts that the good ole’boys club systematically existed and served only them ~ Nativegrl77

1954 – The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled for school integration in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka. The ruling declared that racially segregated schools were inherently unequal.

May 17, 1954 – In Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that segregation of public schools “solely on the basis of race” denies black children “equal educational opportunity” even though “physical facilities and other ‘tangible’ factors may have been equal.

Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” Thurgood Marshall had argued the case before the Court. He went on to become the first African American appointed to the Supreme Court.

source: history.com and youtube.com

In politics and governance, Douglass worked for the U.S’ diplomacy efforts abroad—particularly in the Caribbean. He was often in some leadership or ambassador role that made use of his speaking, diplomacy and writing abilities.

Taking different government postings worked for Douglass since they often weren’t dramatically different from each other.  He could also engage in public speaking when he felt. The one role that was very different from the others was the time he spent as U.S. Marshall.

It should also be noted that this was a time when Black people were put in civil service positions very often by a Republican controlled government. Black civil servants were met with mixed reactions from the Black community.

Many roles were vital to getting Black politicians in a position of power. This allowed them to impact policy to help in the betterment of Black life. However, there were roles that were perceived as placeholders or feel good roles for Republicans.

ROLE AS RECORDER OF DEEDS

His posting as Recorder of Deeds went through the Senate 47-8 on May 17, 1881. It was something of a departure from the more active positions he’d taken before. In some ways, it was similar to another posting he’d taken four years earlier as U.S. Marshall.

The nature Frederick Douglass’ role as Recorder of Deeds is documented, but not really discussed for two main reasons. It isn’t a role that heralds great deeds since tasks were similar to those of a county clerk. Also, Douglass had a tendency to stay at a post for a short period before being given another. This role put him in direct contact with those he wanted to help the most. Douglass would step down as Recorder of Deeds in 1886 to resume speaking full time.

SOURCE:
https://ordinaryphilosophy.com/2016/08/