Civil Rights Cases

These were five cases which originated in Federal Courts in Kansas, District of Columbia, Missouri, New York, and Tennessee, respectively, and which were heard and disposed of together in the Supreme Court, since each of them involved the rights of freedmen under the Civil Rights Act of March 1, 1875, providing for full and equal accommodations for all persons at hotels, theaters, public conveyances and places of amusement, without regard to race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The court held the statute to be unconstitutional and not to be within the scope of either the Thirteenth or the Fourteenth Amendment. See Civil Rights Cases, 109 US 3, 27 L Ed 836, 3 S Ct 18. To the foregoing, there is to be added Brown v Board of Education, 347 US 483, 98 L Ed 873, 74 S Ct 686, 38 ALR2d 1180, supp op 349 US 294, 99 L Ed 1093, 75 S Ct 753, which, in holding that the denial to negro children of admission to public schools attended by white children, under state laws requiring or permitting segregation according to race, deprives them of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, established a precedent for numerous later cases involving segregation of the races.