Minorities Achieve Legal Equality

The segregation era of the late 1800s and early 1900s consisted of limited voting rights, unequal school funding, segregation in water fountains, cemeteries, prisons, trains, waiting rooms, restaurants, elevators, hospitals, public bathrooms and even churches for the colored. The segregation sparked violence. The minorities began associations and held protests in public areas to fight back against the injustice. Court cases such as Plessy v. Ferguson, Regents of University of California v. Bakke and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 achieved legal equality for minorities in the United States.

In the 1890s, public transportation was legally segregated. Homer Adolph Plessy challenged the law, following up to the Supreme Court in The Plessy v. Ferguson case. He had mistakenly been seated in the first class section of a train. He was told to relocated to the colored section of the train or he would be removed. The case was significant because it changed American society. It was decided that racial segregation would be upheld under the separate but equal doctrine. According to the law, racial segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. “The Court expressly rejected Plessy’s arguments that the law stigmatized blacks ‘with a badge of inferiority,’ pointing out that both blacks and white were given equal facilities under the law and were equally punished for violating the law” (Doc 1). Although Plessy’s argument was declared invalid, the minorities benefited from the court case being that they acquired the right to have the same public facilities, yet divided from the whites.

African-Americans legally were able to vote. However, the Jim Crow laws which include poll taxes, literacy tests, property ownership and the grandfather clause restricted the southern blacks from voting. The tests consisted of information the average person could not pass, therefore, not enough black voters were registered to have an impact on the presidential election. African-Americans were excluded from the political system. Throughout the Civil Rights Movements, the citizens fought for their rights lead by many activists such as Martin Luther King Jr. A significant march from Selma to Montgomery lead to the decision that a voting rights act was needed. President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The act guaranteed African Americans the right to vote. “In Mississippi alone, voter turnout among blacks increased from 6 percent in 1964 to 59 percent in 1969” (Doc 2). The act gave minorities civil rights and equality in the political system