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Strauder V. West Virginia

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The history of America is as much the history of freedom and triumph as it is the history of the segregation and oppression of African Americans. The acquisition of Civil Rights was not just contained in the movement of the 1960’s, but was a road that had spanned the entirety of the era after the end of Southern Reconstruction. If President Hayes had not agreed to remove Federal soldiers from the South, the Civil Rights movement would not have happened during the 1960’s, but would have happened much earlier. During the time of reconstruction, the rights of the newly freed African Americans was constantly in jeopardy, and it was an ongoing struggle for the fair treatment that was promised by the Constitution. When the North lost southern influence, …show more content…

In the case of Strauder v. West Virginia, an African American man challenged the state’s law that only whites could serve in jury duty, saying that it was unconstitutional to the 14th Amendment, but the court ruled that states could choose to exclude any person from serving on a jury, even if that reason was simply because they were not white (Strauder v. West Virginia). From this decision, it is clear that, even after the passing of the 14th Amendment, many, if not most court judges thought that African Americans were inferior, intellectually and morally, to white men, and still held that equal participation in the government should not be possible. The denial of African Americans from serving their country, through their local courts, in the same capacity as white people was a chief reason for the continual contention that was had with state governments, especially those that were disinclined to allow civil rights to African Americans, and court appeals for violation of rights seemed to be the most effective way to induce the equality of the races, or at least to make people aware of the social injustice. One of the most famous examples of the push against discrimination was the landmark Brown v. the Board of Education, a consolidation of four cases from four states against the state government for the laws against African Americans children from attending “whites only” schools violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (Brown v. Board of Education). The idea of schools that educate students of different races was not a frontrunning issue in America’s sociopolitical eye until the eve of the Civil Rights Movement, and although the Fourteenth Amendment protects the rights of American citizens to enjoy equal institutions, the

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