Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Separate But Equal In The Bold New City Of The South: A Shadow Of What Remains, Charity Dera

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

This project undertakes the task of analyzing the historical and contemporary landscape of Jacksonville, Florida, the “Bold New City of the South,”1 from a multidisciplinary vantage point. It argues that the spirit of the overturned “separate but equal” holding of Plessy v. Ferguson2 and its bold segregationist ideologies reverberate today in both subtle and overt ways. Yet, that reality has not come without the resilience and perseverance of pioneering natives who have resisted such ideals in bold ways. While segregation is deeply rooted in U.S. history and scholars have readily addressed the contemporary effects of landmark cases such as Plessy …

Toys As Evidence, Randall K. Johnson

Faculty Works

This Essay asks and answers a single question, which was posed during a recent symposium at the National Museum of Toys & Miniatures. Could the study of revealed preferences, which is the idea that observed behaviors are the best indicator of one’s beliefs, improve our collective understanding about what constitutes unlawful discrimination in certain U.S. markets? A possible answer, which is informed by the Brown v. Board of Education decision, is the study of revealed preferences may improve our collective understanding for three reasons.

One reason is the study of revealed preferences provides a window into how some producers and …

From 1957 To 2023: How The Supreme Court Prevented Little Rock Schools From Achieving The Ideal Of Desegregation, Nyssa Kruse

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

No abstract provided.

Brown V. Board Of Education: Enduring Caste And American Betrayal, Sheryll Cashin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article reflects on the role of residential caste in reproducing school segregation and how the Supreme Court betrays the equality principles of Brown by applying a colorblind constitutionalism that renders so-called de facto residential caste, and subsequent school segregation, acceptable.

During the seven-decade Great Migration of the 20^th century, northern cities deployed policies to create an architecture of inequality in which African Americans and white Americans did not live in the same neighborhoods. While the Fair Housing Act of 1968 rendered intentional discrimination in housing markets illegal, and the Court also ruled against forms of intentional housing discrimination, …

When Public Meets Private: Private School Enrollment And Segregation In Virginia, Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, Ash Taylor-Beierl, Erica Frankenberg, April Hewko, Andrene Castro

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Recognizing Virginia’s central role in the expansion of segregated southern private schools after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, we review law and policy related to private school segregation. We also conduct an empirical analysis of Virginia private school enrollment and segregation since the turn of the twenty-first century, finding uneven enrollment even as the number of private schools has grown. Segregation in the sector is deepening. As public funding for private schools rises, we make the case that the increasingly blurred lines between public and private education in Virginia are rooted in adaptive discrimination.

Persistent Impediments And The Geography Of “Affirmatively Furthering” Fair Housing: The Case Of Erie County, Ny, Jason Knight, Heather R. Abraham, Christopher Holtkamp, Russell Weaver

Journal Articles

Despite the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, segregation and discrimination remain key characteristics of the American housing system. The Act sought to reverse decades of private and public sector policies that contributed to segregated neighborhoods and the exclusion of protected classes from equal access to housing. Under the Act, communities receiving funds from US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) are required to “affirmatively further fair housing” (AFFH). This paper examines the AFFH mandate as operationalized by HUD grantees in Erie County, NY, by evaluating six Analysis of Impediments (AI) to Fair Housing reports prepared from …

Law School News: Commencement 2023: Rwu Graduates Urged To 'Work Hard And Dream Big Dreams' 5-19-2023, Jill Pais, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

The Black Fourth Amendment, Charisma Hunter

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Policing Black bodies serves at the forefront of the American policing system. Black bodies are subject to everlasting surveillance through institutions and everyday occurrences. From relaxing in a Starbucks to exercising, Black bodies are deemed criminals, surveilled, profiled, and subjected to perpetual implicit bias when participating in mundane activities. Black people should have the same protections as white people and should possess the ability to engage in everyday, commonplace, and routine activities.

The Fourth Amendment was not drafted with the intention of protecting Black bodies. In fact, Black bodies were considered three-fifths of a person at the drafting of the …

“Pigs In The Parlor”: The Legacy Of Racial Zoning And The Challenge Of Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing In The South, Jade A. Craig

MC Law Review

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 includes a provision that requires that the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) administer the policies within the Act to “affirmatively further” fair housing. Scholars have largely derived their analysis from studying large urban areas and struggles to integrate the suburbs. The literature, however, has not focused on the impact of zoning and discriminatory land use policies within and around low-income rural and small communities or specifically in the southeastern United States. Scholars have also insufficiently considered the implications of these policies on the duty to “affirmatively further” fair housing.

Racial zoning was …

White Picket Fences & Suburban Gatekeeping: How Long Island’S Land Use Laws Cement Its Status As One Of The Most Segregated Places In America, Jessica Mingrino

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

The average wealth of Black families is one-seventh that of white families in the United States today. Homeownership—the primary avenue through which Americans accumulate personal and generational wealth—is the leading driver of the wealth disparity between white and Black American families, known as the “racial wealth gap.” The systematic and intentional exclusion of Black people from developing communities during the twentieth century largely excluded people of color from the housing boom and denied them the opportunity afforded to white people to multiply their assets. Contrary to widespread belief, however, legislation-backed oppression of Black Americans did not end in the …

The 1676 Project: Black And White Together In The U.S.A., Danny Duncan Collum

The Journal of Social Encounters

America’s post-George Floyd racial reckoning has brought a new focus on the country’s history of enslavement, segregation and systemic racism. However, this reckoning has often failed to recognize that the roots of systemic racism lie in the need of the wealthy planters in colonial Virginia to divide the African and English indentured servants who constituted a majority threatening to elite power. Nor do contemporary versions of U.S. history always account for the persistent reoccurrence of class-based interracial movements, such as the late 19^th century Populists, or their promise as a long-term solution to the country’s racial divides.

Deflect, Delay, Deny: A Case Study Of Segregation By Law School Faculty, Briana Rosenbaum

Scholarly Works

Many histories of school desegregation litigation center on the natural protagonists, such as the lawyers and plaintiffs who fought the status quo. Little attention is paid to the role that individual faculty members played in the perpetuation of segregated legal education. When the antagonists in the historiographies do appear, it is usually as anonymous individuals and groups. Thus, “the Board of Regents” refused to change its policy and “the University” denied a person’s application.

But recently discovered and rarely accessed historic documents provide proof of the direct role that some law school faculty members played in the perpetuation of segregation. …

On Proper[Ty] Apologies And Resilience Gaps, Marc L. Roark

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Moving From Harm Mitigation To Affirmative Discrimination Mitigation: The Untapped Potential Of Artificial Intelligence To Fight School Segregation And Other Forms Of Racial Discrimination, Andrew Gall

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

Reparations For Black Health, Alexandre Rotondo-Medina

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Separate But Free, Joshua E. Weishart

Law Faculty Scholarship

“Separate but equal” legally sanctioned segregation in public schools until Brown. Ever since, separate but free has been the prevailing dogma excusing segregation. From “freedom of choice” plans that facilitated massive resistance to desegregation to current school choice plans exacerbating racial, socioeconomic, and disability segregation, proponents have venerated parental freedom as the overriding principle.

This Article contends that, in the field of public education, the dogma of separate but free has no place; separate is inherently unfree. As this Article uniquely clarifies, segregation deprives schoolchildren of freedom to become equal citizens and freedom to learn in democratic, integrated, …

Brown, Massive Resistance, And The Lawyer's View: A Nashville Story, Daniel Sharfstein

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Every grassroots story complicates what we already know, and the history of Cecil Sims and his world48 stands out in at least two important ways. First, Sims's work on issues relating to segregated education predates Brown. In the late 1940s, as Southern states responded to Supreme Court decisions desegregating graduate education, Sims assumed a central role in developing nominally race-neutral proposals that involved a series of complex transactions and legal forms. Just as the Civil Rights Movement began years before Brown and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Sims is emblematic of the segregated South's "long history" of resistance to civil rights. …

Fair Housing’S Third Act: American Tragedy Or Triumph?, Heather R. Abraham

Journal Articles

Fifty-two years ago, Congress enacted a one-of-a-kind civil rights directive. It requires every federal agency—and state and local grantees by extension—to take affirmative steps to undo segregation. In 2020, this overlooked Fair Housing Act provision—the “affirmatively furthering fair housing” or “AFFH” mandate—has heightened relevance. Perhaps most visible is Donald Trump’s racially charged “protect the suburbs” campaign rhetoric. In an apparent appeal to suburban constituents, his administration repealed a race-conscious fair housing rule, replacing it with a no-questions-asked regulation that elevates “local control” above civil rights.

The maneuver is especially stark as protesters fill the streets, marching in opposition to systemic …

Nine Ways Of Looking At Oklahoma City: An Essay On Sam Anderson’S Boom Town, Rodger D. Citron

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The New Tipping Point: Disruptive Politics And Habituating Equality, Sarah E. Waldeck, Rachel D. Godsil

Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Essay argues that the events of 2020 opened a window of political opportunity to implement policies aimed at dismantling structural injustice and systemic racism. Building on the work of philosopher Charles Mills and political scientist Clarissa Rile Hayward, we argue that the Black Lives Matter Movement constituted the “disruptive politics” necessary to shift dispositions of many in the United States toward racial equity by interrupting the white “epistemologies of ignorance.” Moreover, because policies that correct structural injustice are beneficial for people across race, even those whose hearts and minds remained closed may embrace legislative policies that function to dismantle …

Tear It All Down: Highways As Racist Monuments, Sarah Schindler

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

In recent months, citizens and elected officials around the country have been tearing down or ordering the removal of monuments that symbolize white supremacy and subjugation. While many of the targeted monuments are statues of people who supported or espoused racist ideologies, another set of more innocuous monuments to racial segregation still stand: America’s Highways.

Strategies For Equitable Access: Identifying Benefits And Strategies For Creating Integrated Public Schools, Annotated Examples Of Current School District Enrollment Practices, And Resources For Further Exploration, Lisa A. Gooden

Faculty Works

Prepared for the Equity Oriented Strategic Planning Committee for Kansas City Public Schools. Includes a summary of the benefits of integrated schools, strategies for creating equitable schools, annotated examples of current practices employed by public school districts in the United States to foster equitable access to education, and list of links to additional resources for further reading.

Law School News: Remembering John Lewis 07-18-2020, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Sex-Segregation, Economic Opportunity, And Roberts V. U.S. Jaycees, Elizabeth Sepper

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

The American Dreamer, Ashton Hood (Esquir3)

Freedom Center Journal

This spoken-word piece by EsQuir3, a student at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, conducts a comprehensive interrogation of the concept “We the People” by tracing the manifestation of racialized exclusion from the founding era to the flood of social media that saturates the current moment.

Exploring Northern Identity Through Historical Analysis Of Cincinnati’S Antebellum Period, Avery Ozimek

Freedom Center Journal

This essay explores the author's attempt to find a truer Northern identity, different from the one taught in school. It looks at Cincinnati during America’s Antebellum period, a historical period generally seen as one marked by “a nation polarized by specific regional identities. The South held a pro-slavery identity . . . while the North largely held abolitionist sentiments and opposed the institution’s westward expansion.” During this period, Ohio’s constitution may have been anti-slavery, however, the state’s Black Codes, race riots, and anti-abolitionist sentiments told a different story than Ohio’s constitution. The darker history of Antebellum Cincinnati often goes untold, …

Development In Over The Rhine: Can Otr Defeat The Pitfalls Of Gentrification And Create An Economically Diverse Community?, Madeline High

Freedom Center Journal

This paper focuses on the emergence of gentrification, the negative consequences it creates, and the ways in which these consequences can be alleviated. These topics are addressed both through a broad national lens and through a more narrow focus on Over-the-Rhine (OTR), a neighborhood in Cincinnati, Ohio. This paper specifically focuses on displacement in the realm of housing, culture, and economics as well as the potential creation of long-term segregation, and on how such displacement has led to a loss of autonomy of existing residents. The rise of gentrification and its impact is explored through an examination of literature, personal …

Police Brutality And State-Sanctioned Violence In 21st Century America, Itohen Ihaza

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

In West Philadelphia Born And Raised Or Moving To Bel-Air? Racial Steering As A Consequence Of Using Race Data On Real Estate Websites, Nadiyah J. Humber

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Creative Lawyering For Social Change, Raymond H. Brescia

Georgia State University Law Review

Lawyers have long played an integral part in efforts to bring about social change. With an increasing desire to see change in the world, regardless of one’s political perspective, there is a growing interest in understanding the role that lawyers can play in bringing about such change. This type of lawyering is complex, however, and faces far more challenges than those the traditional lawyer faces in his or her work. Although all lawyers solve problems on behalf of their clients, the role of the social-change lawyer is more complex because the problems she seeks to address are more complex, mostly …