Marina Vinnichenko Term Paper: Court Case Gong Lum v. Rice Gong Lum v. Rice (1927) stands out as the case within which the U.S. Supreme Court explicitly extended the pernicious doctrine of “separate but equal”. In this case the issue was whether the state of Mississippi was required to provide a Chinese citizen equal protection of the law under the Fourteenth Amendment when he was taxed to pay for public education but was forced to send his daughter to a school for children of color. Mаrtha Lum, the child of the plаintiff of the case, was a citizen of the United States аnd a child of immigrants from China. She enrolled in and аttended the local public consolidated high school at the age of 9, but was told midway through her first day that
Comparatively his is race was the only distinguishing characteristic. Allen Bakke sued University of California, Davis Medical School, alleging the special admissions program denied him equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. ISSUE IN QUESTION The issue in question, is The University of California Davis Medical School’s admissions policy constitutional? Also in evaluating an applicant; which factors are appropriate to consider? Can race be considered as a factor in the admissions process?
In other words, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that “separate but equal” facilities did not violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The ruling thus lent high judicial support to racial and ethnic discrimination and led to wider spread of the segregation between Whites and Blacks in the Southern United States. The great oppressive consequence from this was discrimination against African American minority from the socio-political opportunity to share the same facilities with the mainstream Whites, which in most of the cases the separate facilities for African Americans were inferior to those for Whites in actuality. The doctrine of “separate but equal” hence encourages two-tiered pluralism in U.S. as it privileged the non-Hispanic Whites over other racial and ethnic minority
Linda Brown, a black child, lived only seven blocks from an all-white elementary school and when her father tried to enroll her he was turned away, so he went to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People who agreed to help. The United States Supreme Court reached a unanimous 9-0 decision stating that “separate but equal facilities are inherently unequal and violate the protections of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment”. (Tushnet,
On May 18th, the final decision was a 7-1 vote, saying “separate but equal”, one court member was absent due to illness. Justice Henry Billings Brown concluded the case by saying, “Segregation does not in itself constitute unlawful discrimination,” (Oyez.org). This decision upheld state imposed racial segregation (Oyez). It also formed the basis of segregation for about fifty years (worldbookonline). The “separate but equal” doctrine stated that black and whites could have separate facilities, as long as they were equal (Oyez).
Board of Education, such as the Briggs v. Elliott case that had been a main topic throughout the film “Separate But Equal”, the topic of segregation was ruled unconstitutional after they had over 50 years of Stare Decisis, or standing by a decision that had been previously decided, and fighting for equal rights that were supposed to come along with the whole “separate but equal” law that the supreme court had set in place back in 1896. While on the topic of separate but equal, the film with the same title discusses the issues that black people had faced with segregation. In the beginning of the movie, Reverend J. A. Delaine is tired of not being treated fairly, and seeing some of his students suffer due to unequal treatment, thus beginning one of the five Brown v. Board of Education cluster cases known as the Briggs v. Elliott case was a very important and influential part of the film due to the fact that not many, if any, racial cases throughout the state of South Carolina had been won. This film shed light on the fact that during the time of segregation, the 14th amendment “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.
This argument proved correct, and desegregation efforts shifted to the constitutionality of laws. Therefore, in 1954, the Supreme Court held in Brown v. Board of Education that state-imposed racial segregation in public institutions violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. While Brown has come to be regarded as a civil rights milestone, the court’s actions also had negative effects on the black people it intended to help.
Though in reality, the face off was with the University of Southern California. The Wiley College debate team although missing Mr. Lowe, was able to clinch victory by beating the Harvard team. One statement in the scene stand outs very clearly, a key dialogue used throughout the movie. “An unjust law, is no law at all”- St. Augustine. Most importantly this statement sets the order and reaffirms the right of civil disobedience of the black community in the south.
She uses another parallelism to argue where differences do not matter in the Judicial Branch. Lee says through Atticus this is where all people are equal no matter who they are because the courts give everyone an equal chance. By Lee using parallelisms and anaphoras gives a sense of unity among Americans, regardless of talent or the color of their skin because all men are created
Ferguson case took those rights away from them. In 1954, the Brown v. Board of Education case finally ended the “separate but equal” law and acknowledged that public schools were violating the Equal Protection Clause of the fourteenth amendment. With the establishment of the Voting rights act and the ruling of the Brown v. Board of Education case, discrimination and segregation did not end, but helped African Americans with the civil rights