Ex parte Commonwealth of Virginia, 100 U.S. 339 [Civil Rights]
1880, Richmond, Virginia
Court Opinion Delivered by: Justice William Strong
Attorney for the Plaintiff: James G. Field, William J. Robertson
Attorney for the Defendant: James Devens, William Smith
The Supreme Court upheld that section of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 that prohibited racial discrimination in the selection of juries. A state judge, J. D. Coles, was arrested for refusing to allow backs to serve on juries. Coles defended his non-selection of blacks for jury duty by stating that his actions were not those of the state since state law forbade any kind of discrimination based on race and that he was not a legislator. The Court reasoned that the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to block oppression of non-whites by state law. Strong claimed that holding office in a state did not relieve the officeholder from an obligation to obey the Constitution of the United States.

Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia, 328 U.S. 373 [Segregation]
1946, Richmond, Virginia
Court Opinion Delivered by: Justice Stanley Reed
Attorney for the Plaintiff: William H. Hastie, Thurgood Marshall
Attorney for the Defendant: Abram Staples
Irene Morgan, an African American, boarded in Glouster County, Virginia, a Grayhound bus on route from Richmond to Baltimore, Maryland. When the bus driver ordered her to move to the back of the bus in order to allow white passengers to be seated, she refused and was arrested. The bus driver had acted according to a 1930 state law that required the segregation of seating rows on buses. On appeal, the U. S. Supreme Court by a seven-- one vote, held the state law unconstitutional as it applied to interstate (those traveling between states) passengers. States could require segregation within the state (intrastate) but not for interstate passengers. Unfortunately, segregation in both intrastate and interstate travel held firm, especially in the Deep South, for the next twenty years as few carriers modified their practices.

Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia 103 F. Supp. 337 [Segregation]
1954, Prince Edward County, Virginia
Court Opinion Delivered by: Justice Earl Warren
Attorney for the Plaintiff: Robert Carter, Jack Greenberg, Thurgood Marshall, Louis L. Redding, Spottswood Robinson III, Charles Scott, Robert Scott
Attorney for the Defendant: J. Lindsey Almond, Jr., John W. Davis, Harold R. Fatzer, Robert McC. Figg, Jr., T. Justin Moore, Paul E. Wilson
This case originated before a federal appeals court and was added to a group of four other cases that went before the U. S. Supreme court as one of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education cases, which overturned Plessy v. Ferguson. Dorothy E. Davis and other black parents brought action against the county school board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, charging that teaching white and African-American children in separate schools was unconstitutional, asking that all inequalities between white and “colored” schools be corrected--with special reference to the Robert R. Moton high school. The district court held that constitutional and statutory provisions requiring the teaching of African-American and white children in separate schools were valid under the ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson. It did rule, however, that all inequities in buildings, facilities, curricula, and buses would be corrected by court order. The plaintiff, represented by a team of NAACP lawyers, appealed the case to the U. S. Supreme Court, which overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and ruled segregated schools unconstitutional.