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Civil Rights and Race Relations in the USA, 1850–2009

The Civil Rights Cases of 1883

  • 3 things to know
  • Paper 3

Overview

Recall questions on what the Court decided, why it was so damaging, Harlan's dissent, the state action doctrine, and how the movement eventually got round it.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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What were the Civil Rights Cases of 1883?

Key term

What was the state action doctrine?

Key term

What was the wider pattern of Supreme Court decisions in this period?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What were the Civil Rights Cases of 1883?

    Model answer

    The Supreme Court struck down the 1875 Civil Rights Act, allowing private racial discrimination.

  2. 2

    What did United States v. Cruikshank (1876) decide?

    Model answer

    That the federal government could not use the Enforcement Act to punish those responsible for the Colfax massacre, because the Fourteenth Amendment restrained only the states.

  3. 3

    Why were the Civil Rights Cases so damaging?

    Model answer

    They struck down the 1875 Act and left segregation by private business beyond federal reach for eighty years, until the 1964 Act used the commerce clause instead.

  4. 4

    What was Justice Harlan's dissent?

    Model answer

    He argued the majority had reduced the amendments to empty words and warned that the ruling would license a new form of servitude.

  5. 5

    What was the state action doctrine?

    Model answer

    The principle that constitutional guarantees bind governments rather than private individuals, which shaped civil rights litigation for a century.

  6. 6

    How did the ruling affect the southern states?

    Model answer

    It signalled that the federal courts would not interfere, which encouraged the wave of segregation statutes that followed from the late 1880s.

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