Tanja Schimming-Muniz

Lisa Lane

US History 111, MiraCosta College

Fall 2008

On paper, it looked like the 14th and 15th Amendment of the Constitution was intended to give equal rights to all citizens of the United States, but history shows us that “legal” mechanisms were put in place to enforce discrimination. Discrimination does not only pertain to blacks, it also pertains to women, artists, and people of a different race, or ideology. This slideshow will take a look at the sanctioning of discrimination from Reconstruction to the Cold War.

United States v. Reese, 1876United States v. Cruikshank, 1876Court declares Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional

Curtailed federal protection of black civil rights by disenfranchising African Americans

Source: Out of Many, p. 336-37

Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882

halted Chinese immigration, limited civil rights of residents Chinese, and forbade their naturalization.

Source: Out of Many, p. 372

Dawes Severalty Act, 1887

Undermined Indian sovereignty by splitting up tribal land which ultimately went to hungry investors

Source: Out of Many, p. 361 Lisa Lane Workbook, p. 10 Lisa Lane Lecture , The West-1900

Jim Crow Laws began Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896 (segregation on railroads based on

‘separate but equal’) Cumming v. Richmond, 1899 (segregation in schools)

Segregation on trains

Sources: Out of Many, p. 399 Lisa Lane Workbook, p. 19

Segregation in schools

http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/39.1/frese.html

Source

Espionage Act, 1917

Tool used by the government to suppress anti-war sentiments. Penalties were up to 20 years imprisonment and $10,000 in fines.

Emma GoldmanArrested and deported for her opposition to the draft

Sources: Out of Many, p. 438 Lisa Lane Workbook, p. 45

Eugene DebsSocialist, imprisoned for speaking out against American involvement during WW I

Women suffragists were arrested, 1917 Alice Paul and her suffragist friends were

convicted, incarcerated, and tortured at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia for their beliefs that women should get the right to vote

Sources: Out of Many, p. 436

Alice PaulWoman suffragist

http://www.alicepaul.org/alicepaul.htm

Immigration Act, 1921 Quota of 357,000 new immigrants each year

Johnson-Reed Immigration Act, 1924 revised quotas to 2 percent of number of foreign-born nationality

Source: Out of

Many, p. 454-55

A final push to legally restrict immigration in the wake of WW I and its increasing anti-immigrant feeling fostered by eugenics.

Henry H. Laughlin head of the American Eugenics Society provided statistical evidence to Johnson-Reed act

Forced deportation of 2 million Mexican Americans backed by Hoover’s policy of “Mexican Reparation”

Source:

http://campusapps.fullerton.edu/news/2005/valenciana.html

Mass unemployment and the desire to cut relief efforts to Mexican Americans led to about 2 million forced deportations of legal Mexican Americans

1930’s2 million legal Mexican-Americans were deported

Korematsu v. the United States, 1944 Executive Order 9066 was upheld, allowing

110,000 Japanese Americans to be put in internment camps Sources: Out of Many, p. 488

Lisa Lane Workbook, p. 70

Official notice of Exclusion and removal

Many were innocent children

National Security Act, 1947 Executive Order 9835 Internal Security Act Immigration and Nationality Act Source: Out of Many, p. 515

resulted in the firing and forced resignations of many federal government employees, the outlawing of political and social organizations, and the barring of citizenship to “subversives” and homosexuals.

HUAC, 1945 The House of Un-American Activities

Committee investigated Hollywood artists and their

communist ties barring them from working and arresting some of them

Source: Lisa Lane, Lecture Cold War Workbook , p. 76

Albert Maltz

Successful Hollywood writer

put on the blacklist because of

his “leftist” beliefs

I hope that this slideshow raised your awareness of governmental mechanisms that curtailed equality and gave you an understanding why current and future entities will fight for true equality.

Tanja Schimming-Muniz, November 4th, 2008