Why Is The 14th Amendment Important

Plessy v. Ferguson , a very important case of 1896 in which the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the legality of racial segregation. At the time of the ruling, segregation between blacks and whites already existed in most schools, restaurants, and other public facilities in the American South. In the Plessy decision, the Supreme Court ruled that such segregation did not violate the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. This amendment provides equal protection of the law to all U.S. citizens, regardless of race. The court ruled in Plessy that racial segregation was legal as long as the separate facilities for blacks and whites were “equal.”

At the time the fourteenth Amendment was made, The Civil War had recently arrived at an end, beating the Confederacy. Acting president,Abraham Lincoln, had proclaimed the slaves liberated toward the end of the war; but, there were still a great deal of waiting inquiries with respect to the previous Confederates and the status of slaves in the nation. The Amendment was made to give people below the jurisdiction of the statute the privilege to fairness. This was known as the Equal Protection Clause. At this time, the purpose behind the fourteenth Amendment is to guarantee that the Civil Rights Act was maintained. On the other hand, taking after the selection of the fourteenth Amendment, Supreme Court choices started putting limitations on the

The fourteenth amendment is also known as equal protection clause. Under the fourteenth amendment, the U.S. Constitution prohibits the states from denying a person that lives in the state the equal rights of the law (LII, 2017). The fourteenth amendment applies to education, especially those that are English language learners (ELL), this means that these students cannot be denied the same rights as non-English language learners. In the Supreme Court case of Lau v Nichols in 1974, this case involved a Chinese American student that attended the San Francisco Unified School District, this student was placed into a general education classroom despite the lack of being proficient in English (Wright, 2010). The school in which this student attended was found in violation, the school was giving ELL students the same material as all other students who speak proficient English and expected the Chinese American student to be able to comprehend the information that is being taught. School districts need to provide the same material, but in a modified form where the student’s will be able to access the information to learn it in the same manner as those non-English language learners.

1) How did the majority opinion in the Supreme Court’s 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision legally shape race

The 14th Amendment was introduced in 1866 and ratified in 1868 by Congress and two-thirds of the state. It attacked national court cases such as Dred Scott and state cases such as People v. Hall in California. This amendment provided citizenship rights to former slaves born in the U.S., guaranteeing no state can deny an individual of their privileges without the due process of law. It also guaranteed each individual the equal protection of laws.

The significance that the 14th amendment had was so imperative because, not only did it make sure fellow African-Americans were granted citizenship they also had to be treated as equals. This allowed them to have equal civil rights and equal legal rights. It is almost as though they no longer treated the African-Americans as slaves and workers but more like people. “It stated that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are granted citizenship”.(14th amendment SECTION 1) This also allowed everyone as a whole to have equal opportunities. The 14th amendment was proposed on June 13th 1865 and it wad passed on July 9th 1868. There were 38 states that ratified the 14th amendment.

The Plessy vs. Ferguson case occured when Plessy was jailed for sitting in the "White" car of the East Louisiana Railroads

Without the 14th Amendment, America would be a complete dictatorship. The 14th Amendment Constitution of the United States of America states that anyone accused of a crime in the United States has the right to due process of law. Without this amendment, innocent would be sent to prison and criminals would be on the loose. The 14th Amendment helps everyone in this country. Even if a non-citizen of our country was accused of robbery or murder then they will have a trial to either prove that they are innocent, or that they are guilty. The government cannot take your life, liberty, or property without due process. This amendment also tells us that us that the states will have equal representation along with representation based on population. We

The Plessy versus Ferguson case started with an incident where an African American passenger on a train, Homer Plessy, broke Louisiana law by refusing to sit in a Jim Crow car, a separate cart on the train where African Americans had to sit. This

Board of Education. This happens particularly when richness and tax base come along with white migration to the suburbs. State courts have made clear the state constitutions’ equality requirements in several ways. For example, Serrano v. Priest in California, school funding in poor districts has been required in multiple states. Once Brown v. Board of Education concluded that separate but equal schooling was unlawful and unequal, two questions were left. Was it acceptable for state departments and school districts to put an end to segregation? Or, was it needed to heal the destruction done by a century of segregated schools? In U.S. v. Jefferson City of Board of Education, the Court of Appeals confirmed that school representatives: “have an affirmative duty under the Fourteenth Amendment to bring about an integrated unitary school system in which there are no Negro schools and no white schools-just schools…” (Frederickson

In 1868, the first 14th amendment was adopted, the public education was in full development because it was important to the nation that any child may succeed in life when give the opportunity. To begin with, does segregation of a child in a public school define the basis of their race? The U.S Supreme court in the Brown V. Board of Education, the Supreme Court made it a point that segregation of white and colored children in public school has detrimental effects on colored children. I do not agree to this, how is it that a colored child would have any effect on a white child in other words, they all have the same physical capability to learn and work the same. Just because they have different colored skin does not make them less adequate.

The United States is a nation that is becoming increasingly diverse. But for a country with changing demographics, this diversity is not reflected within the classroom . Although school segregation in the United States was legally abolished in 1954 as a result of the Supreme Court case Brown vs. Board of Education, public schools today are becoming re-segregated. It is well known that the phrase “separate but equal” was used to justify school segregation. However, separate schools in the mid-twentieth century were not equal, and neither are segregated schools today.

We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does...We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

One of the most influential, as well as controversial, changes to the United States constitution is the Fourteenth Amendment. A majority of the Supreme Court’s most famous cases have used this change in some way. Because this amendment has been used countless times as defense in court cases, it has greatly influenced decisions in the United States, making it one of the more influential additions to the Constitution. Even though this amendment is commonly used, it is also remarkably controversial. It can be said that the controversy of this change can be derived from the complexity of the amendment. In order to understand the basic principles of this reform, it is important to look at the historic value, as well as the current value it holds. The Fourteenth Amendment has been used as defense in a majority of Supreme Court cases, has a deep history, and is still relevant today.

He states that “you must evolve your own social institutions… You must put behind your demands, not simply American Negroes, but West Indians and Africans, and all the colored races of the world” (Franklin 383). These beliefs will remain intact for approximately half a century, to the time when the U.S. acknowledges “that segregated public schools are inherently unequal” (Stallion 65). The Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 leads to the determination that racial segregation is unconstitutional and violates the 14th amendment right to all citizens of equal protection of the laws. This decision subsequently results in an event in 1957 when nine African American high school students in Little Rock, Arkansas - the Little Rock nine - are integrated into the exclusively white school, Central High (Boyd 36). This initial node of integration has driven us to our current system of education, with many diverse groups mixed together. New initiatives are created for the advancement of all learners.