Race Amalgamation

In August of 1896, Frederick Ludwig Hoffman published a book called “Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro” for the American Economic Association. Included in this book was a chapter titled “Race Amalgamation” where Hoffman argues against the idea of race amalgamation, or racial interbreeding. Hoffman believes that if whites and blacks have children together, then the children will suffer from extensive health problems. Hoffman relied on data produced by other social scientists to attempt to prove his point, because he was not a trained social scientist himself. The data he used is considered heavily incorrect by today’s standards because most of it was guided by scientific racism. Hoffman is most likely writing to an audience of his peers, including people who work in the insurance industry. This is proven by the fact that his book was published for the American Economic Association.

Hoffman’s main argument is that race amalgamation is detrimental to whites and blacks because it results in children with serious health issues. Hoffman wants to convince others that race amalgamation is a bad idea, and he does this by scaring his readers. At first glance, it appears that Hoffman is using, or attempting to use, logic to convince his readers that he is right through data tables and examples. When one reads the text more closely however, it becomes clear that Hoffman’s evidence is questionable at best. The data tables and other evidence are confusing and do not really seem to connect to Hoffman’s main point. What Hoffman does well is invoke fear in his reader. He writes of the prostitution and concubinage of colored women, the health complications of children with interracial parents, and the marital issues that face interracial couples. Family is a heavily valued thing in this period of American history, and Hoffman wants his readers to believe that race amalgamation will destroy families. He is claiming if a white person marries a black person it will hurt their children, and it will ruin their relationships. This is going to resonate with his audience because they do value their families and fear is a good motivator. Moreover, the confusing way in which the evidence is presented is going to elevate this fear.

Hoffman’s readers could easily be persuaded by Hoffman’s essay due to his use of rhetoric from the social science community. As stated by John Swales, one of the six main criteria for a discourse community is having specific lexis. Hoffman is very good at using the terminology that goes along with being part of the social science community, even though Hoffman is not actually a social scientist. From an outsider’s perspective, Hoffman is going to sound knowledgable and professional when writing about race amalgamation. Hoffman must be well aware of this and uses it to his advantage to gain the trust of the reader. He furthers this by including evidence in the form of data tables that makes it look like he has done research that can prove his point. Along with this comes a certain respect for scientists of all kinds, including social scientists. It is assumed that science comes without bias because it is just based on cold, hard facts, as discussed in “The Mismeasure of Man.” In the present, it is well known that most of the science being used by Hoffman has some sort of scientific racism attached to it, which means it is most definitely biased. In the time period in which Hoffman wrote his essay, his readers would not have been aware of the bias that was attached to his evidence. Hoffman used this to his advantage as well, gaining the trust of his readers and presenting them with data that is assumed to be scientific, or unbiased, when it has actually been altered to prove Hoffman’s point.

Race Amalgamation

In August of 1896, Frederick Ludwig Hoffman published a book called “Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro” for the American Economic Association. Included in this book was a chapter titled “Race Amalgamation” where Hoffman argues against the idea of race amalgamation, or racial interbreeding. Hoffman believes that if whites and blacks have children together, then the children will suffer from extensive health problems. Hoffman relied on data produced by other social scientists to attempt to prove his point, because he was not a trained social scientist himself. The data he used is considered heavily incorrect by today’s standards because most of it was guided by scientific racism. Hoffman is most likely writing to an audience of his peers, including people who work in the insurance industry. This is proven by the fact that his book was published for the American Economic Association.

Hoffman’s main argument is that race amalgamation is detrimental to whites and blacks because it results in children with serious health issues. Hoffman wants to convince others that race amalgamation is a bad idea, and he does this by scaring his readers. At first glance, it appears that Hoffman is using, or attempting to use, logic to convince his readers that he is right through data tables and examples. When one reads the text more closely however, it becomes clear that Hoffman’s evidence is questionable at best. The data tables and other evidence are confusing and do not really seem to connect to Hoffman’s main point. What Hoffman does well is invoke fear in his reader. He writes of the prostitution and concubinage of colored women, the health complications of children with interracial parents, and the marital issues that face interracial couples. Family is a heavily valued thing in this period of American history, and Hoffman wants his readers to believe that race amalgamation will destroy families. He is claiming if a white person marries a black person it will hurt their children, and it will ruin their relationships. This is going to resonate with his audience because they do value their families and fear is a good motivator. Moreover, the confusing way in which the evidence is presented is going to elevate this fear.

Strivings of the Negro People

• The references and allusions in DuBois’s text give give him and advantage with readers because they prove that he is intelligent and well-read. His references aid him in proving that African-Americans aren’t unintelligent, even though they are portrayed that way in the media. These references are a way to connect with the audience. He is referencing books that the audience would have also read, and he references the Bible, which will appeal the audience’s religion.
• I believe that Dubois is using both emotional and personal appeals. Dubois’s text is full of allusions and metaphors that evoke sympathy/sorrow from the readers. This use of metaphors and allusions turns into personal appeal because they prove that DuBois is knowledgable and well-read. This helps him to establish some sense of credibility because they prove that even though he might be African-American, he is also an intelligent man.
• DuBois is most likely targeting influential white people. The rhetorical appeals being used in this text prove this because he is referencing books he knows these people would have read, such as “Macbeth” and the Bible. In this time period, whites had a significant advantage over people of color as far as education goes, and DuBois is appealing to their higher education.
• In this time period, communities of law and science were saying that African-Americans were less than whites. DuBois is writing the way that he is to challenge these beliefs. He is writing in a way that shows him as being knowledgeable and well-read because at this time no one believed that an African-American could be that way.

Race Amalgamation

• Hoffman was not a professionally trained social scientist and based most of his statistical analyses on the data produced by social science research
• Written for the American Economic Association
• Most of this research was guided by “scientific racism”
• Within this, different races occupied different levels on an evolutionary scale where whites were the highest tier and all others were compared to them
• If races were so naturally different then it made no sense to pass laws aimed at racial equality
• Race amalgamation: racial interbreeding
• One of the reasons used to justify laws for segregation was that they would reduce “harmful” interracial sexual contact and this text is helpful in understanding the social climate at the time of the Plessy decision
• Hoffman’s main question is whether crossing leads to the improvement or deterioration of races
• Fecundity: fertility
• Hoffman says races of similar culture and physical and psychical development can intermarry to mutual advantage
• Antipathy: aversion
• The underlying cause for white antipathy towards blacks is the “law of similarity” that maintains the separation of different classes because a civilized race does not readily intermingle with less advanced civilizations
• Hoffman mentions an immense amount of concubinage and prostitution among colored women but does not mention that most of these women were held as slaves and forced to have sexual contact with them
• Mulatto: a person of mixed race, mainly a person with 1 white and 1 black parent
• Hoffman believes mulattos are inferior to blacks and those of all races
• Scrofula: inflammation of lymph nodes 
• Hoffman argues that any mixture of white blood deteriorates the physique and impairs the power of endurance, and introduces scrofula
• Hoffman believes the mulatto is physically and morally inferior to pure-blooded blacks but intellectually superior 
• Hoffman argues that the crossing of blacks and whites has been detrimental to true progress and contributes to increased mortality rates and inferior social efficiency 
• Hoffman wants to know whether there is a natural tendency towards amalgamation or isolation 
  • he says there is a positive tendency among people of color to congregate together in the South
• Hoffman uses observations such as noticing people do not marry out of their religion or race, which is actually still the trend in current society, however, he is assigning these observation a meaning which is not at all factual. It is true that people still tend to marry within their own race and religion but it is not because people of different races and religions are not meant to be together naturally, it just kind of is what it is.
• Hoffman believes that illicit sexual intercourse has gone down since after the war, is this because the slaves have been freed and can no longer be taken advantage of by whites?
• concludes that amalgamation is contrary to the interests of the colored race

Strivings of the Negro People

• double-consciousness: the sense of political identity thrust upon black Americans in a society where they were not considered just Americans, but African-Americans which gives them two unreconciled strivings generated by their African descent and American citizenship
• second sight: the vision of both an insider and a outsider that helps to critique the strengths and weaknesses of American society
• this essay can be read a response to the Plessy decision
• Du Bois’s description of double-consciousness why, given the unequal power relations between blacks and whites in American society, blacks had little choice but to see segregation as viewing the colored race as inferior
• he says he was shut out from white society but had no desire to join
• he explains that the world he longed for, with opportunities , was for whites and not blacks
• says that being black in American society is like having “second sight” because it only lets him see himself through the eyes of whites
• two-ness: being both an American and black which leads to strife
• African Americans just want be both black and American without losing opportunity
• he brings up the “black artist” and says the beauty revealed to this black artist was the beauty of his race, but it was despised by everyone else

TMM

• Morton believed he could identify races from features of the skull
  • he simply categorized skulls the way he WANTED them to be
• Morton assumed he could measure intelligence through the size of the brain, but he never considered that brain size was not related to intelligence, it was just related to the size go the body
  • Morton failed to separate his skulls by sex or stature because he WANTED to read differences in brain size as differences in intelligence
• Morton’s finagling can be ordered in 4 categories
  1. favorable inconsistencies and shifting criteria: Morton often chose to include or delete large subsamples in order to match group averages with prior expectations
  2. subjectivity directed toward prior prejudice: Morton’s measures were sufficiently imprecise to permit a wide range of influence by subjective bias
  3. procedural omissions that seem obvious to us: Morton never considered alternate hypotheses
  4. miscalculations and convenient omissions: all miscalculations and omissions in Morton’s work helped his case
• polygenists forced defenders of slavery to consider whether they should accept a strong argument from science at the cost of their religion
• the arguments on polygeny represent the last time that arguments in the science mode did not form a first line of defense in the status quo

TMM

• Gould believes that Morton’s work is not a case of conscious fraud because he has honestly convinced himself that he has no prior prejudices that will affect his studies, and is unaware of the fact that he is sort of unconsciously forcing his data to fit in with prejudices he thinks he doesn’t have

“The Race Question in the United States”

• Rhetorical Triangle
  • Writer: John Tyler Morgan
  • Issue: He views the issue as the Blair and Force Bills
  • Gap: He believes that the gap is that other people do not understand that races can not co-exist peacefully because they are naturally different
  • Intended Readers: people who are going to vote on the Blair and Force Bills, other white people, other politicians,
• Toulmin Method
  • Claim: African-Americans are naturally inferior to whites
  • Reason: Morgan believes that God made all races differently and intended for whites to be superior, and these differences makes it impossible for people of different races to get along
  • Evidence: He believes that the 14th and 15th Amendments prove that African Americans need laws to protect them from their “natural inability to preserve their freedom” and are forcing an unnatural union of races
  • Warrant: He is arguing towards the shared values of white supremacy/racism that were held by most people in this time period
  • Counterargument: Abolitionists feel that social equality was a good thing
  • Rebuttal: This has only aggravated things and made the anger between races worse
  • Emotions: Morgan is trying to scare and anger his readers to cause more friction between whites and blacks

“The Race Question in the United States”

• John Tyler Morgan:
  • 14th and 15th Amendment prove the existence of race aversion and prejudice that can only be held in check by law
  • the social and political questions connected to the African race in the United States all relate to and depend upon the essential differences between races that were designed by God
  • the race question involves the mental differences between races
  • believes that it is not slavery, but social and political aspirations that are causing friction between races
  • believes people from Africa have never made a contribution to the arts, sciences, or enterprises
  • believes that emancipation has caused more friction between African-Americans and whites

TMM

• Morton: gathered over 600 human skulls to test whether or not a ranking of races could be established objectively by physical characteristics of the brain, particularly by size
• Morton was a leader among American polygenists
• Morton set out to establish a relative rank of races on objective grounds
• Morton ranked races by the average size of their brains, as measured by the size of the skull
• Morton’s findings “conveniently” matched racial prejudices of the time with whites on top, Indians in the middle, and blacks on the bottom
• Gould reanalyzed Morton’s data and found numerous cases of fraud in the interest of matching prior convictions, but finds no evidence of conscious fraud because if the mistakes were conscious, Morton would not have published them so openly
• scientists who lie are typically excommunicated, but unconscious finagling is prevalent and suggests that prior prejudice can be found anywhere and draws conclusions on the social nature of science

PvF

1. The main discourse community that appears to be discussed in the reading are those belonging to the law community. For example, those who write and interpret laws. The editor himself has written books on law and literature, and is clearly knowledgable about this community. This community clearly fits multiple criteria given by Swales in his article. For example, this community writes with a specific genre. All laws written are structured in a very specific way, and this genre allows the other people in this discourse community to understand what the new law is and how it needs to be implemented. The members of this community also speak a similar language. For example, they frequently use terms like “state rights” and “federal rights” and they are well aware of what those concepts mean and how they are implemented. These are terms that people who are not a part of this community would have trouble fully understanding.
2. This discourse community spreads knowledge by writing laws and interpreting laws through case rulings. For example, the 13th and 14th Amendment were written and published, which spreads knowledge about a new rule that is being put into effect. The judges in this community then argued over the interpretations of these amendments and how far they should extend into the lives of citizens. For example, Justice Miller rules that the 13th Amendment was only created in order to abolish slavery in the “Slaughter House Cases”
3. In multiple court cases discussed in the text, the justices were unwilling to provide a broader interpretation of the 13th and 14th Amendments and were reluctant to rule on civil rights violations. This is critical to the foundation of American Jim Crow Laws. The unwillingness of the justices to provide any sort of support for African Americans is what allowed for segregation to continue. I believe that if even a small amount of judges were able to stand up for African American rights then Jim Crow Laws would not have been able to be implemented. The precedents set in cases like the “Slaughter House Cases” and “Plessy v. Ferguson” allowed for the creation of “loopholes” in the 13th and 14th Amendments and allowed for the writers of Jim Crow laws to get away with continuing segregation and the degradation of African American people.

PvF

• 14th Amendment was originally used to keep states from interfering with big businesses
• 13th Amendment interpretation is restricted in “the Slaughter House Cases” when Justice Miller argued that the 13th Amendment was created only to abolish slavery
• 14th Amendment interpretation is restricted in “United States v. Cruikshank” where Justice Field argued that it provided no federal protection against actions committed by one person against another
• did the 13th Amendment abolish slavery or was it intended to eliminate all discrimination that threatened to perpetuate what Justice Taney called “deep and enduring marks of inferiority and degradation”
  • Court opted for the more narrow view
• 14th Amendment protected only civil rights
• 1875 Civil Rights Act guaranteed full and equal enjoyment by all people within the jurisdiction of the United States of accommodations, public transportation on land and water, theaters, and other places of public amusement
  • “Civil Rights Cases” ruled most of the provisions unconstitutional
• New South: the South that had emerged from the Civil War and looked to the future
• Henry W. Grady thought of Radical Reconstruction as a revolution in 3 steps imposed on the South
  • 1. establish equal economic rights for African Americans by abolishing slavery
  • 2. eliminate race as a barrier to suffrage
  • 3. guarantee equal social and civil rights through the Civil Rights Act on 1875
• In the “Civil Rights Cases” the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had authority to pass laws prohibiting only discriminatory actions by states, not by private citizens
• Plessy v. Ferguson
  • Louisiana argued that its law was a constitutionally mandated use of set power to secure the public good by preserving the peace and health of the community
  • Plessy argued that his protection under the 14th Amendment was being violated and that there could be no health reasons keeping blacks and whites separated because nurses tended to children of both races
  • Tourgee argued that the real evil lies not in the color of the skin but in the relationship the colored person has with whites and that the real intention of the law was to promote happiness for whites at the expense of blacks
  • Tourgee also argued that racial mixing has made it impossible to tell who is black and who is white, and such a difficult decision should not be left up to a train conductor
  • Tourgee argued that the reputation of being white is a piece of property
  • Tourgee tried to establish that the 13th and 14th Amendments created affirmative rights and that the assortment of people according to race violated the 13th Amendment by perpetuating the essential features of slavery
• Plessy v. Ferguson ruling
  • 13th Amendment argument thrown out by citing the strict interpretation from the “Slaughter House Cases”
  • 14th Amendment argument was thrown out based on logic relied on the distinction between political and social equality and the assumption that the social difference between races had a foundation in the “nature of things”
  • used “Roberts v. City of Boston to argue that if Massachusetts could justify segregated schools, the Louisiana law looked less like an unreasonable product of southern racial prejudice
  • cited antimiscegenation laws as proof of the universally recognized power of states to enact ordinances separating the races
  • evoked “Civil Rights Cases” to justify “separate but equal” train cars
  • it was not denied that reputation could be property but Plessy was not considered white under Louisiana law, so this argument was invalid
  • it was concluded that the definition of race was a state issue and not a federal government issue
  • an equal but separate law did not violate standards
  • argued that a fallacy of Tourgee’s argument was that it was assumed that blacks and whites were not treated equally, but since whites could not ride in the train car designated for blacks, the separate but equal standard was upheld
  • argued that a second fallacy was the assumption that legislation was needed to overcome social prejudices, but Brown argued that if two races were to meet on terms of social equality, it must be the result of natural affinities
  • in conclusion Brown argued that if one race be inferior to another, the Constitution cannot out them on the same plane
• Harlan’s Dissent
  • argued that the purpose of the Louisiana law was to regulate the use of a public highway (railroads were considered highways in this period) by citizens of the United States based solely on race
  • he set out to prove that the Louisiana law was unconstitutional
  • argued that everyone knew that the purpose of this law was to exclude colored people from coaches designed for whites
  • he worried that if the Court condoned these laws then it would allow states to pass laws separating people by religion and other criteria
  • argued that the Constitution is color-blind and neither knows or tolerates classes among citizens
  • “the guarantee of equality proved but a thin disguise for instituting a regime of repressive racial segregation”

TMM

• appeals to reason have been used throughout history to enshrine existing hierarchies as proper and inevitable
• biological determinism: the notion that people at the bottom are constructed of inferior material
• hard-liners: believed blacks were inferior and held that their biological status justified enslavement and colonization
• soft-liners: agreed blacks were inferior but held that people’s right to freedom did not depend on their intelligence level
• monogenism (degenerationism): origin from a single source (Adam + Eve)
• polygenists: races are separate biological species (from different Adams)
• recapitulation: the idea that higher creatures repeat the adult stages of lower animals during their own growth
• polygeny was one of the first theories of largely American origin that won the attention and respect of European scientists
• Agassiz was the leading spokesperson for polygeny
• Agassiz’s predisposition to polygeny arose from 2 aspects of his personal theories and methods
  1. Agassiz developed a theory about “centers of creation” where species were crated in their proper places and did not generally migrate far from these centers
  2. Agassiz was a splitter in his taxonomic practice who was probably tempted to view human races as separate creations
• Agassiz believed the tale of Adam and Eve referred only to the creation of caucasians
• Agassiz urged politicians to refuse social equality to African-Americans because “no man has a right to what he is unfit to use”
• Agassiz was terrified of amalgamation but could not explain why “interbreeding” among races was common
• Agassiz’s paper is typical of it’s genre at this time because it advocated for social policy while being disguised as a scientific inquiry

TMM

1. biological determinism: the claim that worth can be assigned to individuals and groups by measuring intelligence as a single quantity
2. craniometry (measurement of the skull) and certain types of psychological testing
3. Determinists have often invoked the traditional prestige of science as objective knowledge, free from social or political taint
4. groups in power
5. both 2 and 3
6. reification and ranking
7. he writes that his book is about “the abstraction of intelligence as a single entity, its location in the brain, its quantification as one number for each individual, and the use of these numbers to rank people in a single series of worthiness” and how it usually finds that the oppressed are deserving of their status
8. -influential and that scientists believed they were pursuing unsullied truth
9. it takes the current status of groups as a measure of where they should and must be

PvF

1. a widespread racial mixture made it difficult to divide people into pure white and pure black categories
2. Tourgee wanted the Supreme Court to deem segregation laws as unconstitutional
3. He was of mixed race and could have easily ridden in the white car without trouble
4. Ferguson ruled in favor of Desdunes was riding on an interstate train and it was the federal governments power to regulate interstate commerce, Plessy was riding on an intrastate train so Louisiana had power over it and could uphold their segregation laws
5. political rights are rights that we have in relation to the political entity that governs us, social rights are the rights we have in relation to other human beings in society and are not secured by law and civil rights occupy a middle ground by being nonpolitical rights of citizens in a certain country
6. congress passes civil rights acts when it decides that some social rights are so important that they should receive legal protection
7. it shifted the court of final appeal from the State to the Federal Supreme Court
8. White butchers brought the Slaughter-House Cases to the Supreme Court

TMM (51-62)

• biological determinism: the claim that worth can be assigned to individuals and groups by measuring intelligence as a single quantity
  • craniometry: measurement of the skull
  • psychological testing
• basic argument of the opposition: social and economic roles accurately reflect the innate construction of people
• determinists like to say that science is objective knowledge that is free from social and political influence
• biological determinism possesses evident utility for groups in power
• this text argues the scientific weakness and political contexts of the determinists arguments
  • criticize the myth that science itself is an objective enterprise
• facts are not pure and unsullied because culture influences what we see and how we see it
• the history of scientific views mirrors social movements
• many questions formulated by scientists are so restrictive that the answer can only validate social preference
• reification fallacy: our tendency to convert abstract concepts into entities
• ranking fallacy: our propensity for ordering complex variation as a gradual ascending scale
• this book is about the abstraction of intelligence as a single entity, its location within the brain, its quantification as one number for each individual, and the use of these numbers to rank people in a single series of worthiness, to find that the oppressed and disadvantaged are inferior and deserve their status
• in most cases discussed in this book, we can be fairly certain that biases, though often expressed as egregiously as in cases of conscious fraud, were unknowingly influential and that scientists believed they pursuing unsullied truth
• biological determinism is a theory of limits: it takes the current status of groups as a measure of where they should and must be

PvF (1-20)

• 1880’s: beginning of mandated racial segregation laws
• Jim Crow Laws: separate but “equal” facilities for people of different races
• May 18th, 1896: Supreme Court rules on Plessy v. Ferguson
  • Homer Plessy was arrested during a planned protest with the New Orleans African Americans citizen’s committee to challenge Louisiana’s equal but separate accommodation law for all state railways
• The committee contacted Albion Winegar Tourgee, a white novelist and lawyer who was the leading white spokesperson for people of color
  • he believed that the only solution to the “race problem” was education for whites to reduce racial prejudice and for African Americans to increase economic opportunity and to inform them as new citizens
  • he agreed to take on the case for free and his aim was to have segregation laws deemed unconstitutional
• Tourgee planned to have someone of mixed race violate a segregation law so that he could question how people were classified as colored
  • Homer Plessy agreed to be the test case
• Justice John Howard Ferguson ruled that the segregation laws on railways were legal because Plessy was on an intrastate train and the state of Louisiana had the power to regulate railways within its borders
• the Louisiana Jim Crow law was possible because the goals of Reconstruction after the Civil War had not been realized
  • Reconstruction had 2 primary goals: rebuild the South and reform the southern economy, which had previously been based on a slave economy
  • 2 stages of Reconstruction: presidential and Radical or congressional
    • first was lead by Andrew Johnson and mainly consisted of enforcing the 13th Amendment
      • most southern states passed “black codes” which kept African Americans from voting, serving on juries, testifying against whites, and forced them to sign yearly labor contracts to create a disguised form of slavery
  • 1866 Civil Rights Act was passed to put a stop to “black codes” and 14th Amendment was also passed which marked the move to Radical Reconstruction
    • the passage of these acts violated most southerners 2 basic beliefs: white supremacy and state’s rights
  • 1867 Reconstruction Act: expanded the federal government’s control by dividing the South into military zones and giving federal troops the power to regulations from Washington
  • Radical Reconstruction: implemented by a group of Radical Republicans who wanted to bring about the second American revolution and all citizens would have equal civil and political rights
    • Republican Ulysses Grant vs. Democrat Horatio Seymour
      • Democrats had one issue: opposing Reconstruction
      • racial intermixture (ex. interracial marriage) scared many voters
  • 15th Amendment (the last of the Civil War amendments: removed race and color as barriers to vote for male citizens
    • most supporters of Radical Reconstruction did not envision total equality for African-Americans
  • Reconstruction was a failure mainly because of the country’s unwillingness to continue to try to provide political and civic equality for African Americans
    • the end of reconstruction came with the election of 1876: Rutherford B. Hayes is named president in exchange for the end of Reconstruction
• 15th Amendment
  • simply kept states from denying someone the right to vote based on race, but states were still allowed to deny people the right to vote based on other criteria
• 13th Amendment
  • meant to make slavery illegal
  • the passage of “black codes” proved that the language used in this amendment was not specific enough
• political rights: the rights we have in relationship to the political entity that governs over us
• social rights: rights in relation to other human beings in society and are not secured by law
• civil rights: the nonpolitical rights of citizens of a particular country
  • civil rights acts are passed when Congress decides that some social rights are so important that they need legal protection
• 14th Amendment shifted the court of final appeals from the State to the Federal Supreme Court
• 1857 Dred Scott: Justice Roger B. Taney ruled that members of the African race were not part of the sovereign people that constituted the country and therefor were not citizens, but in some states they could have state citizenship, which would not make them United States citizens
• Dred Scott ruling overturned in the first sentence of the 14th Amendment that guarantees any person born in the United States citizenship
• 14th Amendment says no state may make a law that interferes with the privileges or immunities of United States citizens
• 14th Amendment due process clause: limits the power of individual states to restrict various rights
• the first time the courts ruled on the 13th and 14th Amendments was in 1873 in the Slaughter House Cases which involved the rights of white butchers, not African Americans
• Justice Samuel Miller argued that the 14th Amendment forbade state infringement on the privileges and immunities of United States citizenship, which are narrow in scope