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The history of racism and politics in the United States is one that involves far more than mere discrimination. It is a history which encompasses concepts of congressional authority, judicial power and the overall scope of states' rights. At the center of the debate stands the Supreme Court. The decisions which they make set the racial precedent for the entire country, and for a long time, the precedent which they set was not a particularly admirable one. The first major problem which the Court had to face was the fact that, racially speaking, what was "law" and what was "right" were two very different things. It was only in time that public opinion began to change and racial wrongs were slowly dealt with. Ultimately, if there is ever a conflict between what is "right" and what is "law", there can be only one solution. The law must change. As Congress, the Supreme Court and the whole of the US have found, however, rectifying laws is the easy part. It is the implementation of these changes which can be so difficult and so divisive.
The Reconstruction Era
The Reconstruction Era was a complicated and rather confusing time for US politics. The end of the Civil War in no way marked the end of racial tension. Equality was still a long way off, but now, at least, there would be a legal basis for pursuing that equality. The significance of the three new amendments cannot be overlooked. For the first time, the Court could pursue both "law" and "right" at the same time. In the past, the constitution had lent its subtle support to slavery by simply acknowledging and allowing its existence. Now, that had changed. As expected, these constitutional additions, which outlawed slavery, conferred citizenship, and prohibited voting discrimination, met some very clear resistance. They were passed for this very reason, with the understanding that if the South was to budge, they would not do so willingly. Even the process in which the amendments were passed set a clear precedent with regard to the relationship between nation and state. The forced ratification made it very clear that a measure of state supremacy had been lost. The balance of power between the national government and the state governments was gradually shifting, and a more unitary standard of law and right was slowly developing.
As history reveals, there is often a great divide between the way law operates on paper and the way it operates in practice. The Court soon found this out, and the pressure they faced seemed to weaken their resolve in many ways. There were isolated verdicts which very much applied broad principles of racial equality, but overall, the whole concept of federalism continued to get in the way. National authority had been exerted in amending the constitution, but the Court seemed unwilling to exert this new found authority in many of the verdicts it made. The decision rendered in United States v. Cruikshank (1876) was particularly crippling. Approximately one hundred blacks were killed when a group of armed whites surrounded their place of meeting and set it on fire. After being acquitted on the state level, the Supreme Court balked upon receiving the appeal, and likewise failed to convict. Issues of state citizenship were out of their jurisdiction and so they refused to act. If this was to be the standard, of course, then there could really be no end to the scope of state authority. Ultimately, the verdicts passed during the Reconstruction period managed to confer a small degree of political equality, but failed on all counts to support social equality. If any thing, they provided legal precedent for wide-spread segregation, and in some ways gave segregation more protection than it had ever before experienced. By making the claim that state action could be restricted but individual action could not, segregation flourished in all realms of "private" industry. It is true that the Reconstruction period helped establish a very needed legal basis for racial equality, but in the end, the overall improvements in race relations were very minimal.
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