Civil Rights and Civil Liberties between the Wars, 1920–1940 (2025)

The Dark Past: The US Supreme Court and African Americans, 1800—2015

William M Wiecek

Published:

2024

Online ISBN:

9780197654460

Print ISBN:

9780197654439

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The Dark Past: The US Supreme Court and African Americans, 1800—2015

William M Wiecek

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William M Wiecek

William M Wiecek

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Pages

148–179

  • Published:

    August 2024

Cite

Wiecek, William M, 'Civil Rights and Civil Liberties between the Wars, 1920–1940', The Dark Past: The US Supreme Court and African Americans, 1800—2015 (New York, NY, 2024; online edn, Oxford Academic, 27 Aug. 2024), https://doi.org/10.1093/9780197654460.003.0005, accessed 30 Sept. 2024.

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Abstract

This chapter outlines the civil rights and civil liberties between the wars. For almost a century and a half, the US Supreme Court resolved cases involving African Americans without directly interrogating the idea of race itself. Before 1938, American democracy excluded African Americans from its ambit, with the exemption of the Reconstruction and its rapidly dimming afterglow. The Taft Court was consistently sympathetic to business interests while remaining willing to expand the reach of the Constitution’s protections for civil liberties and civil rights. The chapter details how law created racial categories and the social construction of race. The chapter then discusses the United States v. Carolene Products Co. case, which forecast the Court’s postwar role in protecting civil liberties.

Keywords: civil rights, civil liberties, US Supreme Court, African American, American democracy, Reconstruction, Taft Court, Carolene Products case, law, race

Subject

Political History Modern History (1700 to 1945) Legal and Constitutional History Slavery and Abolition of Slavery African American History

Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

© Oxford University Press 2024

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