Post by futurist on Oct 28, 2018 23:54:21 GMT
Michael McConnell writes in extensive detail in this article how the 1875 Civil Rights Act in the U.S. originally contained a school desegregation clause which was ultimately taken out of the bill as a result of Republican fears of public opinion after their severe defeat in the 1874 midterm elections:
chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=12624&context=journal_articles
Anyway, what if the Republicans stick to their guts and pass the 1875 Civil Rights Act with the school desegregation provision?
For what it's worth, I suspect that this provision of the 1875 Civil Rights Act would have been struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1883--albeit on different grounds than the rest of the 1875 Civil Rights Act would have been struck down. Basically, what I suspect the U.S. Supreme Court will say is that since the Fourteenth Amendment (in its view) doesn't prohibit school segregation, the U.S. Congress would have no authority to integrate the schools throughout the U.S.
Back in the 1870s and 1880s, the U.S. Supreme Court was relatively regressive on racial issues. For instance, in Pace v. Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of anti-miscegenation laws using the symmetrical equality arguments. Thus, I am certainly not optimistic that that the U.S. Supreme Court would have allowed the U.S. Congress to integrate the schools in the U.S. Of course, it certainly wouldn't help that proponents of the 14th Amendment said nothing about school segregation back when the 14th Amendment was still being ratified in 1866-1868.
I don't think that a hostile U.S. Supreme Court ruling would have triggered a mass exodus of Blacks to the North for the very simple reason that I doubt that there would have been a lot of jobs for Blacks in the North during this time. Black migration to the North only began in significant amounts in the 1910s when World War I cut off the flow of Europeans to the United States--thus creating a need for an alternative source of labor for U.S. employers. If their life in the South will be miserable but they won't find jobs elsewhere, then I don't think that Blacks would leave the South en masse.
Anyway, any thoughts on this?
chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=12624&context=journal_articles
Anyway, what if the Republicans stick to their guts and pass the 1875 Civil Rights Act with the school desegregation provision?
For what it's worth, I suspect that this provision of the 1875 Civil Rights Act would have been struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1883--albeit on different grounds than the rest of the 1875 Civil Rights Act would have been struck down. Basically, what I suspect the U.S. Supreme Court will say is that since the Fourteenth Amendment (in its view) doesn't prohibit school segregation, the U.S. Congress would have no authority to integrate the schools throughout the U.S.
Back in the 1870s and 1880s, the U.S. Supreme Court was relatively regressive on racial issues. For instance, in Pace v. Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of anti-miscegenation laws using the symmetrical equality arguments. Thus, I am certainly not optimistic that that the U.S. Supreme Court would have allowed the U.S. Congress to integrate the schools in the U.S. Of course, it certainly wouldn't help that proponents of the 14th Amendment said nothing about school segregation back when the 14th Amendment was still being ratified in 1866-1868.
I don't think that a hostile U.S. Supreme Court ruling would have triggered a mass exodus of Blacks to the North for the very simple reason that I doubt that there would have been a lot of jobs for Blacks in the North during this time. Black migration to the North only began in significant amounts in the 1910s when World War I cut off the flow of Europeans to the United States--thus creating a need for an alternative source of labor for U.S. employers. If their life in the South will be miserable but they won't find jobs elsewhere, then I don't think that Blacks would leave the South en masse.
Anyway, any thoughts on this?