The 13th Amendment, one of the Reconstruction era amendments, abolished slavery.
Freedom from Discrimination
This timeline addresses milestones in the civil rights movement, women’s rights movement, and immigration and citizenship.
American Civil Liberties Union
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the organization, founded in 1920, is the “nation’s guardian of liberty, working daily in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country.”
Affirmative Action
This timeline addresses U.S. Supreme Court cases related to affirmative action.
Chapter 22: Affirmative Action and the Boundaries of Discrimination
Simply stating that discrimination would no longer be tolerated did not translate into bringing new opportunity to those people who had suffered prejudicial treatment. The question became how to overcome the tension between an individual’s claim to equal treatment by a state, and that state’s responsibility to foster equality among its citizens.
Chapter 13: Public School Desegregation
Brown v. Board of Education was the Court’s greatest twentieth-century decision, a pivotal case that separated one era from another and that permanently reshaped the debate about race and American society.
Chapter 6: Separate But Not Equal
On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy waited at the Press Street railroad depot in New Orleans. He had a first-class ticket for a thirty-mile trip to Covington, Louisiana. The train arrived on time at 4:15 in the afternoon, and the nicely dressed, well-groomed young man entered the first-class carriage, took a seat, gave his ticket to the conductor, and boldly spoke words that led to his arrest and trial in a court of law.
Chapter 4: Denying an Appeal for Freedom
In 1857 the Supreme Court refused to grant Dred Scott’s petition for freedom from slavery. In the 1830s, Dred Scott had moved from St. Louis with his owner, Dr. Emerson, to the free state of Illinois. After Emerson’s death, Scott returned to St. Louis with the doctor’s widow.
A Conversation on the Japanese Internment Cases
Essential Question: Should the executive branch have the authority to deny individual rights and liberties during times of war, even if it is done in a discriminatory way?