Federalism: Whose Power is This, Anyway? >Page 1, 2, 3
Segregation: The Supreme Battle of State's Rights
In 1954, the Supreme Court in its landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision ruled that separate school facilities based on race are inherently unequal and thus in violation of the 14th Amendment which states, in part: "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."
However, several predominately Southern states, chose to ignore Brown. v. Board of Education and continued the practice of racial segregation in schools and other public facilities.
The states based their stance on the 1896 Supreme Court ruling in Plessy vs. Ferguson. In this historic case, the Court, with only one dissenting vote, ruled racial segregation was not in violation of the 14th Amendment if the separate facilities were "substantially equal."
Protests against segregation built steadily during the 1950s and 60s, but the states continued to declare their constitutional power to regulate access to public facilities based on race.
In June of 1963, Alabama Governor George Wallace stood in front of the doors of the University of Alabama preventing black students from entering and challenging the federal government to intervene. Later the same day, Wallace gave in to demands by Asst. Attorney Gen. Nicholas Katzenbach and the Alabama National Guard allowing black students Vivian Malone and Jimmy Hood to register.
During the rest of 1963, federal courts ordered the integration of black students into public schools throughout the South. In spite of the court orders, and with only 2 percent of Southern black children attending formerly all-white schools, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 authorizing the U.S. Justice Department to initiate school desegregation suits was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson.
A less momentous, but perhaps more illustrative case of a constitutional battle of "states' rights" went before the Supreme Court last November when the Attorney General of the United States Reno took on the Attorney General of South Carolina Condon.
Next page Reno v. Condon - November 1999 >Page 1, 2, 3
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