Equality, Equal Rights Movements, and the Constitution

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Equality, Equal Rights Movements, and the
Constitution

• Julie Novkov
• University at Albany, SUNY

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What is the Constitution? How should we think
about it?

• Top down approach
• Bottom up approach
• Thinking of constitutional law as constitutional
  change and development

3
Broad equality questions an overview
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What is equality?

• What is equality?
• Conventional narratives
• Developmental narratives
• Groups that have struggled to achieve equality

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Antebellum struggles and early arguments for
social transformation (1789-1860)
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The Antebellum Era Independence and the
Constitution

• Independence
• Revolution and early governance
• Creating the Constitution

The signing of the Constitution
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The problem of fugitive slaves

• Early legislation
• Political tensions and compromise
• Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842) and the complicated
  nature of federalism

Theodor KaufmannEffects of the Fugitive-Slave
LawNew York Hoff Bloede, 1850
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Constitutional crisis and war

• The Corwin Amendment
• No amendment shall be made to the Constitution
  which will authorize or give to Congress the
  power to abolish or interfere, within any State,
  with the domestic institutions thereof, including
  that of persons held to labor or service by the
  laws of said State.

• Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)
• Lincolns election
• War and the gradual process of emancipation

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The emergence of activism for womens rights

• Colonial women and independence
• Abolition and the rise of feminism
• Grimke sisters
• Seneca Falls
• First-wave tensions over race

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony
Sojourner Truth with Abraham Lincoln
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Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow
(1865-1900)
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Reconstruction and the dream of equality

• The end of war and the end of slavery
• The Freedmens Bureau
• Reconstruction a tragedy in four acts
• A building revolution?

The Freedmens Bureau, Harpers Weekly, July 25,
1868
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Insurgency, loss of will, and the death of
revolution

• Southern resistance
• Supreme ambivalence
• Slaughter-House Cases (1873)
• United States v. Cruikshank (1875)
• Strauder v. West Virginia (1879)

This Is A White Mans Government,Harpers
Weekly, September 5, 1868.
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The rise of Jim Crow

• Federal permission slip 1 Pace v. Alabama
  (1883)
• Federal permission slip 2Civil Rights Cases
  (1883)
• The final seal Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

The Lost Cause Worse Than SlaveryThomas
NastOctober 24, 1874Reproduced from Harper's
Weekly
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Suffrage and the struggle to define equality for
women (1873-1920)
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The ideological and cultural complexities behind
the fight for woman suffrage

• Cultural background separate spheres
• Feminine activism and feminist activism
• Temperance
• Settlement house movement

Women plead with saloon owner, Harpers Weekly
1874
Hull House
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Women and work what do women need?

• Women and wage labor
• Womens clubs and exploited labor
• Trade unionism and working class organization
• Middle class advocacy

Striking ILGWU members
Tobacco rollers at home (Lewis Hine)
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Woman suffrage winning the vote

• Early struggle
• Postbellum divisions and reconciliation
• Intensive campaigning
• Winning the battle, losing the war?

Pro-suffrage parade, 1913
Signing up to stop the vote
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Retrenchment and elite-based reform (1900-1951)
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The Jim Crow order

• Jim Crow policies
• Jim Crow as a form of government
• Jim Crow and white supremacy
• Eugenics

Segregated drinking fountain
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Cracking the facade

• The rise of civil rights organizations
• Coalitions for Jim Crow reform
• World War II as a watershed

Thurgood Marshall and Charles Houston with their
client Donald Gaines Murray during court
proceedings, ca. 1935. NAACP file photo, Library
of Congress
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The transition to mass movement politics
(1952-1965)
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The transition to mass movement politics

• Brown v. Board of Education
• Mass resistance and civil rights mobilization
• The federal government steps in

Brown v. Board of Education
Elizabeth Eckford desegregates Little Rock
Central High School (Will Counts)
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Early liberal second-wave feminism

• NOW Statement of Purpose
• To take action to bring women into full
  participation in the mainstream of American
  society now, exercising all the privileges and
  responsibilities thereof in truly equal
  partnership with men.

• New activism
• Civil rights
• Labor struggles
• Friedan and The Feminine Mystique
• Formation of NOW in 1966

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The rise of liberation and the law as hollow
ideal (1966-1970)
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Racial radicalism and the turn away from liberal
legal equality

• National leadership
• Continued Supreme Court support
• Lyndon Johnson as a champion of equality
• Rise of black power

Members of the Black Panther Party
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Radical feminism

• Roots in civil rights/antiwar movements
• Emergence of radical feminism
• Methods, characteristics, and goals

Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pittman Hughes, c. 1970
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Assimilating and limiting reform (1971-2008)
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The fight for and against the ERA

• What is the Equal Rights Amendment?
• Early history
• An aura of inevitability
• STOP ERA
• Future of the ERA

STOP ERA rally
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Equality as access or equality as transformation?
The case of same-sex marriage (1973-2008)
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Equality as access or transformation? Same-sex
marriage

• History of regulation
• Litigation and reform
• The struggle against anti-sodomy laws
• Bowers v. Hardwick (1986)
• Lawrence v. Texas (2003)
• Same-sex marriage

New Yorks first pride parade, held on the first
anniversary of Stonewall
Julie and Hillary Goodridge attended a gay
marriage rally held at the State House on Feb.
20, 2004. Boston Globe.
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Reflecting on constitutionalism and equality

• Constitutional text as inspiration and touchstone
• Constitutional text as constraint and limit
• How does one construct an effective movement
  strategy?