The Fourteenth Amendment Timeline of Events and Cases, 1865-1965
1865 & 1866- After the Civil War, former confederate states passed Black Code laws that accepted African Americans as free citizens but denied them many rights.
July 1866- In response to the Black Codes, Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment and sent it to the states for ratification. The Amendment was ratified in July 1868 (former Confederate states were required to ratify the amendment as a condition of readmission to the United States). 1873- The Slaughter-House Cases were the first major cases where the Supreme Court interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court decided, in this case, that the federal government could not protect all civil rights—only those rights traditionally associated with national citizenship, like free access to sea ports. Fundamental civil rights were the domain of the states, and the states could choose whether or not to protect those rights.
1875- Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which forbid racial discrimination in hotels, public transportation, public parks, and juries.
1876- In United States v. Cruikshank, the Supreme Court overturned the convictions of members of a white mob who killed between 100 and 280 black men after a contentious election. The federal government prosecuted the men under a law that made it illegal for people to conspire to deprive others of their constitutional rights. The Court said that this law was unconstitutional because the Fourteenth Amendment limited government actions, but did not prevent individuals from restricting one another’s rights. This ruling effectively stopped the federal government from being able to protect the rights of black citizens.
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1880- The Supreme Court struck down a West Virginia law that forbade blacks from serving on juries.
1883- The Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875, saying that the federal government was not allowed to prohibit discrimination by individuals or corporations.
1886- In Yick Wo v. Hopkins, the Court ruled that the City of San Francisco’s discriminatory treatment of Chinese businessmen (where the city gave building permit waivers to white business owners but not to Chinese business owners) violated the Equal Protection Clause.
1896- In Plessy v. Ferguson, a challenge to a Louisiana law that segregated rail cars, the Supreme Court said that having segregated facilities for blacks and whites did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, so long as the facilities are equal.
1909- The NAACP was founded.
1938- In Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, the Supreme Court ruled that having an all-white law school but no all-black law school in Missouri violated the separate-but-equal concept from Plessy.
1948- President Truman desegregated the armed forces.
In Shelley v. Kraemer, the Supreme Court held that private neighborhood agreements (which forbid homeowners to sell property to non-white persons) were state-sponsored inequality, as state-funded courts had to enforce the agreements.
1950- In Sweatt v. Painter, the Supreme Court ruled that a separate law school for black students in Texas was not “equal” to the law schools available only to white students.
1954- In Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court overturned Plessy entirely by saying that separate public schools for whites and blacks were “inherently unequal” and could therefore never be constitutional.
1964- Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a law forbidding discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, and sex in both private employment and in public
Primary Sources Relating to the Fourteenth Amendment
accommodations. This included privately owned hotels, movie theaters, restaurants, and any other business that could be seen as having an effect on interstate commerce. The Supreme Court later upheld this law as constitutional within the powers of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.
Primary Sources Relating to the Fourteenth Amendment
Primary Sources Relating to the Fourteenth Amendment
What was the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment? How was the Amendment interpreted by the courts? How did that interpretation changed over time?
Document Excerpts:
Amendment XIV, Sections 1 and 5, ratified 1868 “Black Codes” of Mississippi, 1865 Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction Congressional Debates on the Fourteenth Amendment “The President and the Amendment,” The Daily Phoenix, June 24,
1866 The Slaughter-House Cases (1873) U.S. v. Cruikshank (1875) The Civil Rights Cases (1883) Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) Adamson v. California (1947)
Primary Sources Relating to the Fourteenth Amendment
Amendment XIV, Sections 1 and 5, ratified 1868
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Questions to Consider
1. Underline and define any uncommon words.
2. Summarize section 1 in your own words.
3. What are state governments prohibited from depriving people of?
4. What does “equal protection of the laws” mean to you?
Primary Sources Relating to the Fourteenth Amendment
“Black Codes” of Mississippi, 1865After the civil war ended, many states in the South immediately passed laws limiting the freedom of the freed slaves. The laws, called “Black Codes” typically prevented freed slaves from voting, traveling freely, testifying against whites in court, or serving on juries.
All freedmen, free negroes and mulattoes in this State, over the age of eighteen years, found … with no lawful employment or business …shall be deemed vagrants.
Every civil officer shall, and every person may, arrest and carry back to his or her legal employer any freedman, free negro, or mulatto who shall have quit the service of his or her employer before the expiration of his or her term of service without good cause.
…if the laborer shall quit the service of the employer before the expiration of his term of service, without good cause, he shall forfeit his wages for that year up to the time of quitting.
…no freedman, free negro or mulatto, not in the military service of the United States government, and not licensed so to do by the board of police of his or her county, shall keep or carry fire-arms of any kind, or any ammunition, dirk or bowie knife…
Any freedman, free negro, or mulatto committing riots, routs, affrays, trespasses, malicious mischief, cruel treatment to animals, seditious speeches, insulting gestures, language, or acts, or assaults on any person, disturbance of the peace, exercising the function of a minister of the Gospel without a license from some regularly organized church, vending spirituous or intoxicating liquors…shall…be fined not less than ten dollars, and not more than one hundred dollars, and may be imprisoned at the discretion of the court, not exceeding thirty days.
Questions to Consider
1. Compare and contrast the institution of slavery with the requirements that “All freedmen, free negroes and mulattoes …with no lawful employment or business …shall be deemed vagrants” and may be arrested for leaving an employer.
Primary Sources Relating to the Fourteenth Amendment
Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, 1866
Slavery had been abolished by constitutional amendment. A large proportion of the population had become, instead of mere chattels, free men and citizens. Through all the past struggle these had remained true and loyal, and had, in large numbers, fought on the side of the Union. It was impossible to abandon them, without securing them their rights as free men and citizens… Hence it became important to inquire what could be done to secure their rights, civil and political…
…
The feeling in many portions of the country towards emancipated slaves… is one of vindictive and malicious hatred. This deep‐seated prejudice against color is assiduously cultivated by the public journals, and leads to acts of cruelty, oppression, and murder, which the local authorities are at no pains to prevent or punish. There is no general disposition to place the colored race, constituting at least two‐fifths of the population, upon terms even of civil equality.
…
Congress would not be justified in admitting such communities to a participation in the government of the country without first providing such constitutional or other guarantee as will tend to secure the civil rights of all citizens of the republic…
Questions to Consider
1. The report says: “It was impossible to abandon [freed slaves], without securing them their rights as free men and citizens.” Why?
2. What does the report suggest will happen if Congress does not provide some guarantee of civil rights to freed slaves?
Primary Sources Relating to the Fourteenth Amendment
Congressional Debates on the Fourteenth AmendmentRep. John Bingham’s speech of February 28th, 1866, introducing an initial draft of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment to the House of Representatives
The SPEAKER. The proposed constitutional amendment is as follows:— The Congress shall have power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper to secure to the citizens of each State all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States, and to all persons in the several States equal protection in the rights of life, liberty, and property.
Mr BINGHAM: I repel the suggestion [that proponents of the Amendment] seek to …. take away from any State any right that belongs to it, or from any citizen of any State any right that belongs to him under that Constitution. The proposition pending before the House is simply a proposition to arm the Congress of the United States…with the power to enforce the bill of rights as it stands in the Constitution today.
What does the word immunity in your Constitution mean? Exemption from unequal burdens. Ah! say gentlemen who oppose this amendment, we are not opposed to equal rights; we are not opposed to the bill of rights that all shall be protected alike in life, liberty, and property; we are only opposed to enforcing it by national authority…
Mr. HOTCHKISS: As I understand it, his object in offering this resolution and proposing this amendment is to provide that no State shall discriminate between its citizens and give one class of citizens greater rights than it confers upon another. If this amendment secured that, I should vote very cheerfully for it today; but as I do not regard it as permanently securing those rights, I shall vote to postpone its consideration ….
I understand the amendment as now proposed by its terms to authorize Congress to establish uniform laws throughout the United States upon the subject named, the protection of life, liberty, and property. I am unwilling that Congress shall have any such power. Congress already has the power to establish a uniform rule of naturalization and uniform laws upon the subject of bankruptcy. That is as far as I am willing that Congress shall go.
Primary Sources Relating to the Fourteenth Amendment
Questions to Consider
1. How does the draft amendment that Rep. Bingham discussed differ from the final version of the Fourteenth Amendment as ratified by the states?
2. Congressman Bingham wrote this early draft of the Fourteenth Amendment. Why might historians be particularly interested in what he had to say about the meaning of the Amendment?
3. Find the spot where Rep. Hotchkiss begins speaking. What is his concern about the proposed Amendment?
Senator Jacob Howard’s speech of May 23rd, 1866, introducing a nearly final version of the 14th Amendment to the Senate.
The first section of the amendment … declares that— No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Now, sir, here is a mass of privileges, immunities, and rights, some of them secured by the second section of the fourth article of the Constitution… some by the first eight amendments of the Constitution; … all these immunities, privileges, rights… are secured to the citizen solely as a citizen of the United States and as a party in their courts. They do not operate in the slightest degree as a restraint or prohibition upon State legislation. … but [apply] only to the legislation of Congress.
The great object of the first section of this amendment is, therefore, to restrain the power of the States and compel them at all times to respect these great fundamental guarantees.
The last two clauses of the first section of the amendment disable a State from depriving not merely a citizen of the United States, but any person, whoever he may be, of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or from denying to him the equal protection of the laws of the State. This abolishes all class legislation in the States and does away with the injustice of subjecting one caste of persons to a code not applicable to another. It prohibits the hanging of a black man for a crime for which the white man is not to be hanged. It protects the black man in his fundamental rights as a citizen with the same shield which it throws over the white man.
Primary Sources Relating to the Fourteenth Amendment
[The amendment] will, if adopted by the States, forever disable every one of them from passing laws trenching upon those fundamental rights and privileges which pertain to citizens of the United States, and to all persons who may happen to be within their jurisdiction. It establishes equality before the law, and it gives to the humblest, the poorest, the most despised of the race the same rights and the same protection before the law as it gives to the most powerful, the most wealthy, or the most haughty.
Questions to Consider
1. What does Senator Howard say is the “The great object of the first section of this amendment”?
2. What “fundamental guarantees” will the Fourteenth Amendment require states to respect?
3. What types of laws does Senator Howard say the last two clauses will abolish?
Primary Sources Relating to the Fourteenth Amendment
The Daily Phoenix (Columbia, S.C.)Newspaper article from Sunday, June 24, 1866, about the passage by Congress of the Fourteenth Amendment and President Johnson’s views on the Amendment.
The President and the Amendment.
The President clearly intimates that he is opposed to the amendment so long as eleven States are not represented, and also asserts what the Phoenix alluded to the other day, that the “sovereign people of the nation have not had an opportunity of expressing their views” upon the subject.
The President does not adopt the view of [Republican Congressman] Stevens and his followers, who think that tinkering with the Constitution is a perfectly legitimate mode to advance their ambitious projects, and retain them in power. He says, with all the force and dignity of the statesman and patriot, that “even in ordinary times any question of amending the Constitution must justly be regarded as of paramount importance.” What a rebuke to these blatant politicians, who ruthlessly lay their hands on this sacred instrument merely to serve their own ends and purposes.
Again, it will be noted that he says, “that, of the thirty-seven States which constitute the Union, eleven are excluded from representation,” thus nobly declaring that he regards all the States in the Union. Of the eleven States which attempted to secede from the Union, all, with the exception of Texas, he once more proclaims—despite all the tantrums of the radicals—“have been entirely restored to all their functions as States, in conformity with the organic law of the land.”
Questions to Consider
1. According to the Daily Phoenix, why is President Johnson opposed to the Amendment?
Primary Sources Relating to the Fourteenth Amendment
The Slaughter-House Cases (1873)The biracial Reconstruction legislature in Louisiana passed a law regulating slaughterhouses. The law said that all butchers had to use a central slaughterhouse located across the Mississippi river from the city. The city’s butchers sued, arguing that the law violated their Fourteenth Amendment rights because it infringed on their right to pursue a profession. The Supreme Court heard the case and ruled that the slaughterhouse law did not violate the Constitution.
Majority Opinion (Justice Miller)… no one can fail to be impressed with the one pervading purpose found in [the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments], lying at the foundation of each…; we mean the freedom of the slave race… and the protection of the newly made freeman and citizen from the oppressions of those who had formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him.
We do not say that no one else but the negro can share in this protection. Both the language and spirit of these articles are to have their fair and just weight in any question of construction.
Was it the purpose of the fourteenth amendment... to transfer the security and protection of all the civil rights which we have mentioned, from the States to the Federal government? … We are convinced that no such results were intended by the Congress which proposed these amendments, nor by the legislatures of the States which ratified them.
…The existence of laws in the States where the newly emancipated negroes resided, which discriminated with gross injustice and hardship against them as a class, was the evil to be remedied by [the Equal Protection clause], and by it such laws are forbidden.
We doubt very much whether any action of a State not directed by way of discrimination against the negroes as a class, or on account of their race, will ever be held to come within the purview of this provision.
Dissenting Opinion (Justice Field)The question presented is, therefore, one of the gravest importance not merely to the parties here, but to the whole country. It is nothing less than
Primary Sources Relating to the Fourteenth Amendment
the question whether the recent amendments to the Federal Constitution protect the citizens of the United States against the deprivation of their common rights by State legislation. In my judgment, the fourteenth amendment does afford such protection, and was so intended by the Congress which framed and the States which adopted it.
Questions to Consider
1. What is the fundamental difference of opinion between the majority and dissenting opinions with regard to the intended meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment?
2. Why does Justice Miller think that State actions that are not intended to discriminate against African Americans were unlikely to ever be invalidated by the Fourteenth Amendment?
U.S. v. Cruikshank (1875)As many southern states refused to prosecute white people for violent attacks on blacks, the federal government passed laws designed to protect former slaves from attacks by the Ku Klux Klan and other terrorist groups. One such law made it a felony to “band or conspire together … to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any citizen, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise and enjoyment of any right or privilege granted or secured to him by the constitution or laws of the United States.” In 1874, the federal government prosecuted several white men under this law for participating in a massacre of black residents in Louisiana. In 1875, the Supreme Court heard their case and ruled that the law was unconstitutional.
Majority Opinion (Justice Waite) “The fourteenth amendment prohibits a State from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; but this adds nothing to the rights of one citizen as against another. It simply furnishes an additional guaranty against any encroachment by the States upon the fundamental rights which belong to every citizen as a member of society…
The fourteenth amendment prohibits a State from denying to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws; but this provision does not, any more than the one which precedes it… add any thing to the rights which one citizen has under the Constitution against another…”
Primary Sources Relating to the Fourteenth Amendment
Questions to Consider
1. Write the first sentence of this excerpt in your own words. What does the majority mean when it says the Fourteenth Amendment “adds nothing to the rights of one citizen as against another”?
2. This decision invalidated a federal law designed to protect African Americans from mob violence. What practical effect did that have on the lives of black Southerners?
Primary Sources Relating to the Fourteenth Amendment
The Civil Rights Cases (1883)In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional. That law had banned some forms of racial discrimination by private individuals and businesses.
Majority Opinion (Justice Bradley)It is State action of a particular character that is prohibited [by the Fourteenth Amendment]. Individual invasion of individual rights is not the subject matter of the amendment.
When a man has emerged from slavery, and, by the aid of beneficent legislation, has shaken off the inseparable concomitants of that state, there must be some stage in the progress of his elevation when he takes the rank of a mere citizen and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws, and when his rights as a citizen or a man are to be protected in the ordinary modes by which other men's rights are protected.
Questions to Consider
1. How many years had passed between the end of the Civil War and this case? How were African Americans treated during that period?
2. W hat is the difference between “state action” and “individual invasion of … rights”? Which does the Court say is prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment?
3. Why did the Court see the Civil Rights Act of 1875 as making African Americans “a special favorite of the laws”?
Primary Sources Relating to the Fourteenth Amendment
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)A state law required separate railway cars for “white” and “colored” passengers. Homer Plessy challenged the law as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection. The Supreme Court ruled that the law was constitutional.
Majority Opinion (Justice Brown) . . .The object of the [Fourteenth] amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political, equality, or a commingling of the two races …. Laws permitting, and even requiring, their separation … do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other, and have been generally, if not universally, recognized as within the competency of the state legislatures in the exercise of their police power. . . .
So far, then, as a conflict with the fourteenth amendment is concerned, the case reduces itself to the question whether the statute of Louisiana is a reasonable regulation, and with respect to this there must necessarily be a large discretion on the part of the legislature. In determining the question of reasonableness, it is at liberty to act with reference to the established usages, customs, and traditions of the people, and with a view to the promotion of their comfort, and the preservation of the public peace and good order.
We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it. . . .
Questions to Consider
1. What do the justices state is the object of the Fourteenth Amendment?
Primary Sources Relating to the Fourteenth Amendment
2. What criteria did the Supreme Court use to determine whether this law was “reasonable”?
3. How do you respond to the court’s contention that if any inferiority is evident, it is only because “the colored race chooses” to interpret the act in that manner?
Dissenting Opinion (Justice Harlan) [The Thirteenth and Fourteenth] amendments, if enforced according to their true intent and meaning, will protect all the civil rights that pertain to freedom and citizenship...
These notable additions to the fundamental law were welcomed by the friends of liberty throughout the world. They removed the race line from our governmental systems. They had, as this court has said, a common purpose, namely to secure to a race recently emancipated, a race that through many generations have been held in slavery, all the civil rights that the superior race enjoy.
They declared, in legal effect, this court has further said,
that the law in the States shall be the same for the black as for the white; that all persons, whether colored or white, shall stand equal before the laws of the States, and, in regard to the colored race, for whose protection the amendment was primarily designed, that no discrimination shall be made against them by law because of their color.
It was said in argument that the statute of Louisiana does not discriminate against either race but prescribes a rule applicable alike to white and colored citizens. But … Everyone knows that the statues in question had its origin in the purpose, not so much to exclude white persons from railroad cars occupied by blacks, as to exclude colored people from coaches occupied by or assigned to white persons.
The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. And so it is, in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth, and in power. So,
Primary Sources Relating to the Fourteenth Amendment
I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time, if it remains true to its great heritage, and holds fast to the principles of constitutional liberty. But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law...
. . . The present decision, it may well be apprehended, will not only stimulate aggressions, more or less brutal and irritating, upon the admitted rights of colored citizens, but will encourage the belief that it is possible, by means of state enactments, to defeat the beneficient purposes which the people of the United States had in view when they adopted the recent amendments of the constitution….
Questions to Consider
1. In arguing that the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments in fact do apply to the Louisiana law, Justice Harlan particularly refers to the amendments’ “true intent and meaning.” What do you think he believed were the amendments’ true intent and meaning?
2. What does Justice Harlan believe is the real meaning behind the legislation enacted in Louisiana?
3. According to Justice Harlan, what effects will this type of legislation have on the United States and its citizens?
Adamson v. California (1947)This case examined whether or not the Fifth Amendment’s right not to bear witness against oneself applied to state governments. The Court ruled that defendants in state courts did not have this right. In a long dissent, Justice Black examined the history of the Fourteenth Amendment and argued that it was intended to apply the Bill of Rights to the states. In this concurrence, Justice Frankfurter rebuts Justice Blacks’ arguments and historical analysis.
Concurring Opinion (Justice Frankfurter) Between the incorporation of the Fourteenth Amendment into the Constitution and the beginning of the present membership of the Court -- a period of seventy years -- the scope of that Amendment was passed upon by forty-three judges. Of all these judges, only one…ever indicated the belief
Primary Sources Relating to the Fourteenth Amendment
that the Fourteenth Amendment was a shorthand summary of the first eight Amendments theretofore limiting only the Federal Government, and that due process incorporated those eight Amendments as restrictions upon the powers of the States. …
… After all, an amendment to the Constitution should be read in a ‘sense most obvious to the common understanding at the time of its adoption. . . . For it was for public adoption that it was proposed.’ …. Those reading the English language with the meaning which it ordinarily conveys, those conversant with the political and legal history of the concept of due process, those sensitive to the relations of the States to the central government, as well as the relation of some of the provisions of the Bill of Rights to the process of justice, would hardly recognize the Fourteenth Amendment as a cover for the various explicit provisions of the first eight Amendments. … Remarks of a particular proponent of the Amendment, no matter how influential, are not to be deemed part of the Amendment. What was submitted for ratification was his proposal, not his speech. Thus, at the time of the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the constitutions of nearly half of the ratifying States did not have the rigorous requirements of the Fifth Amendment for instituting criminal proceedings through a grand jury. It could hardly have occurred to these States that, by ratifying the Amendment, they uprooted their established methods for prosecuting crime and fastened upon themselves a new prosecutorial system.
Questions to Consider
1. Of the 43 Supreme Court judges who ruled on the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, what did 42 determine it meant with regard to the application of the Bill of Rights to the states?
2. According to Justice Frankfurter, whose understanding of a Constitutional provision should be given more weight—its authors, or the general public?
3. What is one way to determine what a Constitutional provision meant to the public when it was adopted?
