Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

The Gospel Of Freedom, Alicestyne Turley

Civil Rights

Wilbur H. Siebert published his landmark study of the Underground Railroad in 1898, revealing a secret system of assisted slave escapes. A product of his time, Siebert based his research on the accounts of northern white male abolitionists. While useful in understanding the northern boundaries of the slaves' journey, Siebert's account leaves out the complicated narrative of assistance below the Mason-Dixon Line. In The Gospel of Freedom: Black Evangelicals and the Underground Railroad, author Alicestyne Turley positions Kentucky as a crucial "pass through" territory for escaping slaves and addresses the important contributions of white and black antislavery southerners who united …

The Papers Of Clarence Mitchell Jr., Volume Vi : The Struggle To Pass The 1960 Civil Rights Act, 1959–1960, Clarence Mitchell Jr., Denton L. Watson

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

The Civil Rights Act of 1960 aimed to close loopholes in its 1957 predecessor that had allowed continued voter disenfranchisement for African Americans and for Mexicans in Texas.

In early 1959, the newly seated Eighty-Sixth Congress had four major civil rights bills under consideration. Eventually consolidated into the 1960 Civil Rights Act, their purpose was to correct the weaknesses in the 1957 law. Mitchell’s papers from 1959 to 1960 show the extent to which congressional resistance to the passage of meaningful civil rights laws contributed to the lunch counter sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina, and to subsequent demonstrations. The papers …

The Papers Of Clarence Mitchell Jr., Volume V : The Struggle To Pass The 1957 Civil Rights Act, 1955–1958, Clarence Mitchell Jr., Denton L. Watson

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Volume V of The Papers of Clarence Mitchell Jr. records the successful effort to pass the 1957 Civil Rights Act: the first federal civil rights legislation since 1875.

Prior to the US Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the NAACP had faced an impenetrable wall of opposition from southerners in Congress. Basing their assertions on the court’s 1896 “separate but equal” decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, legislators from the South maintained that their Jim Crow system was nondiscriminatory and thus constitutional. In their view, further civil rights laws were unnecessary. In ruling that legally mandated …

Columbia Law Experts Submit Two Briefs To Supreme Court In Free Speech/Lgb Rights Case, Law, Rights, And Religion Project

Center for Gender & Sexuality Law

Columbia Law School faculty and policy teams submitted amicus briefs to the Supreme Court on Friday in 303 Creative v. Elenis, a case the Court will decide next term.

The White Supremacist Constitution, Ruth Colker

Utah Law Review

The United States Constitution is a document that, during every era, has helped further white supremacy. White supremacy constitutes a “political, economic and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and non-white subordination are daily reenacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings.”1 Rather than understand the Constitution as a force for progressive structural change, we should understand it as a barrier to change.

From its inception, the Constitution enshrined slavery and the degradation of Black people by …

Review Of The Little Book Of Police Youth Dialogue: A Restorative Path Toward Justice, Robert Brenneman

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Isms In The Twenty-First Century: The Evolution Of Systemic Discrimination, Taylor Neas

University Honors Program

Long have the concepts of racism, sexism, and classism existed in human history. However, their definitions and practice have evolved over time. Modernly, they are all considered forms of discrimination. Recently, these topics have been a source of discussion among many disciplines. This thesis serves to add to existing literature outlining the history of these forms of discrimination and how they presented themselves in early American society. All three forms manifested in different forms in early civilizations before being adopted in colonial America. This work also serves to outline how these forms of discrimination exist in present day America. While …

Comments On ‘Whiteness As Contract’, Marissa Jackson Sow

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

Thank you so much, Jay, and thank you everyone for being here this morning. It’s an honor to be able to join you [now] even before I join you formally and it’s an equal honor to share this morning with professors Huq and Whitlow. I have looked up to and been in conversation with professor Huq specifically; to find out that we are co-panelists and also will be teaching contracts together is very inspiring indeed.

So, what I will try to do in the brief time that we have is talk a little bit about Whiteness as Contract, …

The Real Estate State And Group-Differentiated Vulnerability To Premature Death: Exploring The Political-Economic Roots Of Covid-19’S Racially Disparate Deadliness In New York City In The Spring Of 2020, John Whitlow

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

In May 2020, after several bleak months in which Covid-19 took the lives of thousands of New York City’s most vulnerable residents, a vigil was held in Corona Plaza, Queens, to honor the sixty-seven members of Make the Road New York whose time was cut short by the virus. At the event, State Senator Jessica Ramos spoke of the disproportionate toll Covid-19 has taken on working class, immigrant New Yorkers: “[t]hese communities are on the frontlines without adequate protections and have been left to grapple with extreme food insecurity, . . . evictions, and unemployment . . . .” …

Integrating A Racial Capitalism Framework Into First-Year Contracts: A Pathway To Anti-Capitalist Lawyering, Chaumtoli Huq

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

Nationwide protests against police brutality in the summer of 2020, coupled with the high rates of COVID-19 deaths among Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), has brought to the foreground the role of the legal system in upholding structural racism and economic inequality. This renewed focus spotlighted our legal education: what are law schools doing as the institutions that educate future lawyers to be anti-racist, so they can, in turn, create a legal profession that is anti-racist? Being anti-racist is making conscious choices to fight racism in all its forms: individual, interpersonal, institutional, and structural. Being anti-racist also …

Foreword: Racial Capitalism As Legal Analysis, Jay Hedges

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

In 2010, the Journal of Legal Commentary was renamed the Journal of Civil Rights & Economic Development (JCRED) to reflect its status as the official journal of the Ron Brown Center for Civil Rights here at St. John’s University School of Law. From then on, the Journal has been dedicated to exploring issues of social, racial, and economic justice in the law. Thus, JCRED is situated to be a publication that breaches the divide that has held so much power over legal scholarship through the years. That divide is the segregation of issues of Public Law and Private Law, …

Categorically Caged: The Case For Extending Early Release Eligibility To Inmates With Violent Offense Convictions, Jenna M. Codignotto

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Susan Farrell faced both physical and sexual abuse from her husband before he was killed in 1989. Although Ms. Farrell maintained her innocence and urged that it was her son who killed her husband, she was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy charges, resulting in a life sentence without parole. After serving thirty years of her sentence at the Michigan Department of Corrections, Ms. Farrell’s tragic life met a no less tragic end. In April 2020, one month after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, Ms. Farrell seized in her cell for forty-five minutes before dying from the virus. She …

Contract Law & Racial Inequality: A Primer, Danielle Kie Hart

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

America was founded on institutionally recognized and supported oppression, namely, slavery and conquest. So, the fact that the inequality spawned by this oppression continues to exist today should surprise absolutely no one. That said, the extent of the racialized social and economic inequality that pervades American society today is being exposed in horrifying and glaring detail, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

African Americans, the Latinx community, indigenous communities, and immigrants are at much greater risk of getting sick and dying from COVID-19 because of now widely-acknowledged systemic health and social inequality and inequity. More specifically, in July …

The Betrayal Of The Red, White & Blue: The Failures Of Institutional Self-Regulation & The Military’S #Metoo Movement, Kristen M. Stone

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

After A.S.: Proposals To Alleviate Psychiatric Boarding In Maine, Meredith K. Cook

Maine Law Review

When someone presents to an emergency room with a mental illness manifesting in danger to themselves or others, they can be admitted against their will on an emergency basis to inpatient mental health care through a process colloquially known as a Blue Paper application. However, when an inpatient bed is not immediately available, patients are “boarded” against their will in emergency rooms with little to no therapeutic care, sometimes for several weeks at a time before they are transferred to inpatient care, or their condition stabilizes enough for them to be discharged into the community. In February 2020, a man …

Harris V. State, 138 Nev. Adv. Op. 40 (June 2, 2022), Candace Mays

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Nevada Supreme Court considered whether the district court erroneously dismissed the rights deprivation claims of the appellant, an incarcerated individual, on procedural grounds. The Court held that the lower court erred in dismissing the appellant’s claims with prejudice under NRCP 12(b)(5) when he had pleaded facts sufficient to place the respondents on notice of the nature of the claim and relief sought, in accordance with Nevada’s notice-pleading standard. The Court also held that the lower court erred in dismissing the appellant’s complaint with prejudice, without granting leave to amend to resolve the deficiencies in service, and without an explanation …

No-One Receives Psychiatric Treatment In A Squad Car, Judy A. Clausen, Joanmarie Davoli

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Torch (Summer 2022), Crtp

Torch: The Civil Rights Team Project Newsletter

The Maine Office of the Attorney General administers the Civil Rights Team Project (CRTP). The CRTP’s mission is to increase the safety of elementary, middle school, and high school students by reducing bias-motivated behaviors and harassment in our schools. CRTP accomplishes this by supporting student civil rights teams in Maine schools. The CRTP and student teams are active in engaging school communities in thinking and talking about issues related to:

• Race and skin color
• National origin and ancestry
• Religion
• Disabilities
• Gender (including gender identify and expression)
• Sexual orientation

The Attorney General’s Office created the CRTP in 1996 as a pilot …

Trading Places Or Changing Spaces? At The Crossroads Of Defining And Redressing Segregation, Melvin J. Kelley Iv

Connecticut Law Review

Segregation rates have remained stagnant in many regions of the United States since the passage of the federal Fair Housing Act (FHA) in 1968 and experts expect them to increase in large metropolitan areas. Consequently, poor Blacks will be subjected to the extreme deprivation of group life chances that characterize racially and economically segregated environments. The global pandemic has only further exacerbated these dire circumstances. While severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) may not discriminate, housing, healthcare, criminal, and economic policies have, rendering impoverished communities of color particularly vulnerable to the ravages of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

The …

Blame The Victim: How Mistreatment By The State Is Used To Legitimize Police Violence, Tamara Rice Lave

Articles

No abstract provided.

Sidelined Again: How The Government Abandoned Working Women Amidst A Global Pandemic, Jessica K. Fink

Faculty Scholarship

Among the weaknesses within American society exposed by the COVID pandemic, almost none has emerged more starkly than the government’s failure to provide meaningful and affordable childcare to working families—and, in particular, to working women. As the pandemic unfolded in the spring of 2020, state and local governments shuttered schools and daycare facilities and directed nannies and other babysitters to “stay at home.” Women quickly found themselves filling this domestic void, providing the overwhelming majority of childcare, educational support for their children, and management of household duties, often to the detriment of their careers. As of March 2021, more than …

Afterword: Latcrit At Twenty-Five And Beyond, Part Ii - Challenges And/As Opportunities: Centering "Hybridized" Advocacy Projects In Antisubordination Praxis To Connect Campuses And Communities For Material Long-Term Progress, Francisco Valdes, Steven W. Bender, Jennifer J. Hill

Articles

No abstract provided.

Comment: Understanding Xenophobia As Intersectional Discrimination, Shreya Atrey

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Comment examines the nature of xenophobia and why it seems to fall through the cracks of international human rights law, especially as a form of racial discrimination under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. It considers an understanding of xenophobia as a sui generis case of intersectional discrimination because it has to do with racial grounds but also perhaps other grounds (such as nationality, religion, language, culture, and class), which makes it difficult to disentangle the basis of xenophobic discrimination as based on strictly racial grounds alone.

(G)Local Intersectionality, Martha F. Davis

Washington and Lee Law Review

Intersectionality theory has been slow to take root as a legal norm at the national level, even as scholars embrace it as a potent analytical tool. Yet, in recent years, intersectionality has entered law and policy practices through an unexpected portal: namely, local governments’ adoption of international norms. A growing number of local governments around the world explicitly incorporate intersectionality into their law and practice as part of implementing international antidiscrimination norms from human rights instruments like the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of …

Foreword: Centering Intersectionality In Human Rights Discourse, Johanna Bond

Washington and Lee Law Review

In the last decade, intersectionality theory has gained traction as a lens through which to analyze international human rights issues. Intersectionality theory is the notion that multiple systems of oppression intersect in peoples’ lives and are mutually constitutive, meaning that when, for example, race and gender intersect, the experience of discrimination goes beyond the formulaic addition of race discrimination and gender discrimination to produce a unique, intersectional experience of discrimination. The understanding that intersecting systems of oppression affect different groups differently is central to intersectionality theory. As such, the theory invites us to think about inter-group differences (i.e., differences between …

Racial Disparities In South Carolina's Juvenile Justice System: Why They Exist And How They Can Be Reduced, Grace E. Driggers

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Abortion Rights And Disability Equality: A New Constitutional Battleground, Allison M. Whelan, Michele Goodwin

Washington and Lee Law Review

Abortion rights and access are under siege in the United States. Even while current state-level attacks take on a newly aggressive scale and scope—emboldened by the United States Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey—the legal landscape emerging in the wake of Dobbs is decades in the making. In this Article, we analyze the pre- and post-Roe landscapes, explaining that after the Supreme Court recognized a right to abortion in Roe in 1973, anti-abortionists sought to dismantle that right, first …

Murdering Crows: Pauli Murray, Intersectionality, And Black Freedom, Lisa A. Crooms-Robinson

Washington and Lee Law Review

What is intersectionality’s origin story and how did it make its way into human rights? Beginning in the 1940s, Pauli Murray (1910–1985) used Jane Crow to capture two distinct relationships between race and sex discrimination. One Jane used the race-sex analogy to show that race and sex were both unconstitutionally arbitrary. The other Jane captured Black women’s experiences and rights deprivations at the intersection of race and sex. Both Janes were based on Murray’s fundamental belief that the struggles against race and sex discrimination were different phases of the fight for human rights.

In 1966, Murray was part of the …

Making Me Ill: Environmental Racism And Justice As Disability, Britney Wilson

Articles & Chapters

Civil rights legal scholars and practitioners have lamented the constraints of the largely intent-based legal framework required to challenge racial discrimination and injustice. As a result, they have sought alternative methods that seemingly require less overt proof of discrimination and are more equipped to address structural harm. One of these proposed solutions involves the use of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)—due to its affirmative mandate to address discrimination by reasonable modification or accommodation—and the framing of issues of racial injustice in terms of disability or the deprivation of medical rights. Environmental justice, an area in which issues of both …

Segregation Autopilot: How The Government Perpetuates Segregation And How To Stop It, Heather R. Abraham

Journal Articles

Housing segregation is a defining feature of the American landscape. Scholars have thoroughly documented the government’s historic collusion in segregating people by race. But far from correcting its reprehensible past, the government continues to perpetuate housing segregation today. As if on autopilot, its spending and regulatory activities routinely reinforce housing segregation. Not only is this immoral and bad policy, it is against the law. The government has a statutory duty to conduct its business in a manner that reduces housing segregation. This duty arises from a unique civil rights directive passed by Congress over fifty years ago in the Fair …