Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 [Segregation]
1883, Washington, Missouri
Court Opinion Delivered by: Justice Joseph P. Bradley
Attorney for the Plaintiff: Solicitor General United States; William M. Randolph
Attorney for the Defendant: W.Y.C. Humes
The 1883 Supreme Court decision in the Civil Rights Cases held that neither the Civil Rights Act of 1875 nor the Fourteenth Amendment protected individuals from discrimination by other individuals. More specifically, the Court ruled unconstitutional those provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 that prohibited racial discrimination in inns, public conveyances, and places of public amusement. The Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment only prohibited state curtailment of individual rights. Only the states, moreover, could act to prevent individuals from racial discrimination by other individuals. The lone dissenter on the Court, Justice John Marshal Harlan (Associate Justice 1877-1911), argued that the Thirteenth Amendment guaranteed freedom of individuals from all the incidents and “badges of slavery.” The Court’s majority decision essentially required the federal government to withdraw from all civil rights enforcement--a withdrawal that lasted until the late 1940s. The five cases comprising the Civil Rights Cases involved instances where African Americans had been refused admission to hotels or theaters and access to the “Ladies” car on the Memphis & Charleston Railroad.

Missouri ex rel Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337 [Segregation]
1938, Columbia, Missouri
Court Opinion Delivered by: Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes
Attorney for the Plaintiff: Charles H. Houston, S. R. Redmond
Attorney for the Defendant: William S. Hogsett, Fred L. Williams
Lloyd L. Gaines, an African American, was denied admission to the University of Missouri’s all white law school because of his race. The state routinely offered payment of out-of-state tuition to African Americans seeking education as a remedy to the lack of provision of equal educational facilities within the state. In a victory for the plaintiffs, the Court held that Missouri provided no equal access to higher education in state for its black citizens as compared to its white citizens. This distinction was deemed state-practiced racial discrimination in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Missouri addressed the problem by constructing and staffing a black law school within the University of Missouri. Regarding Gaines, he never did enroll in the law school, disappearing from the scene never to be heard from again after the Court rendered its opinion. Although less a desegregation case than a continued interpretation of the separate-but-equal doctrine, it does mark the first of a series of cases leading up to Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 [Segregation]
1948, St. Louis, Missouri
Court Opinion Delivered by: Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson
Attorney for the Plaintiff: George L. Vaughn, Herman Willer, Thurgood Marshall
Attorney for the Defendant: Gerald L. Seegers
This was the first of four cases in 1948 involving restrictive covenants (known collectively as the Restrictive Covenant Cases) in which the Court ruled racially restrictive property deeds or contracts to be unenforceable by state courts. (The other cases were McGee v. Sipes, Hurd v. Hodge, and Urciolo v. Hodge) These restrictions were used by real estate developers and neighborhood associations to segregate African Americans, as well as others by race, national origin, and religion from white neighborhoods. In St. Louis, where the Shelley case originated, such racial contracts set aside nearly five square miles of housing from black ownership. When the African-American Shelley family purchased a house in the restricted neighborhood, a white family, the Kraemers, sought an injunction to block occupancy. The Missouri Court allowed for the injunction, triggering an appeal coordinated by the NAACP, using arguments that drew heavily upon sociological data and theory. The Court’s unanimous opinion, which largely ignored the massive sociological data presented by the NAACP, found racially restrictive covenants permissible if voluntarily maintained but not enforceable by state action, which violated the Fourteenth Amendment protection of a citizen’s right “to acquire, enjoy, own, and dispose of property.” Although a major victory, Shelley failed to stop private housing discrimination principally because lower courts refused to intervene and neither the Federal Housing Administration nor the Public Housing Administration complied with much vigor or enthusiasm. Nor did the Restrictive Covenant Cases influence later court rulings to any great extent, principally because the enactment of state and federal civil rights legislation in the 1960s, established statutory answers to issues that might otherwise have related to Shelley v. Kraemer.