Supreme Court Landmark Case Civil Rights Cases of 1883

Howard Law School Dean Danielle Holley-Walker and U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Peter Kirsanow talked about Civil Rights Cases (1883). In the group of five consolidated cases, the Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875, a federal law that had granted all people access to public accommodations like trains and theaters, regardless of race. The guests also responded to viewer phone calls and social media comments. Portions of an interview were shown with historian Edna Greene Medford. She described the work of abolitionist Frederick Douglass' with Senator Charles Sumner on passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, and Douglass' reaction to the Court’s 1883 ruling. Clips of an interview were shown with the great-great-granddaughters of Justice John Marshall Harlan, who wrote the dissent in the cases. close