Bakke v. California Reaction

Half of our class presented a mock trial for the real life case: Bakke v. California. Two teams were assigned to either be Bakke's legal team or a legal team for the University of California. 

In 1973, a caucasian man by the name of Allan Bakke applied for the medical school at the University of California, but got denied. This confused Bakke very much cause he had very very high grades and amazing test scores. Apparently at the University of California they used to have a racial quota that said that 16 out of the 100 students that they could select were reserved for people of color, so Bakke did not get admitted to this school. He thought this went against his fourteenth amendment right. The fourteenth amendment states, "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." Bakke believed that this violated his privileges as a citizen. Bakke sued the University of California for violating this amendment and violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibited the discrimination of race. 

In the presentations, I think it was interesting that people on the University of California's legal team brought up how people of color were mistreated for years and this one time something like this happens to a white male is when they start to cause a fight over it. Many colored people a few years prior to this were not allowed an education at all and never had an equal chance as the white people. However, I do not feel that this quota is the way to fix this. They should everyone an equal, fighting chance whatever their race may be. How is it special to get into the University you want only knowing that they accepted you for your race and not your grades or abilities? 

The court eventually decided in favor of Bakke, which I agree with. This decision resulted in the University erasing the racial quota from their program completely, and gave everyone an equal chance to be admitted.

 

EOTO Reaction #2:

The other week, half the class was assigned to a trial, while the other class was assigned to teach us about something they had researched. I learned many things from their presentations, but here are some of my favorites. 

Even though what they did was awful, I still think it is interesting to learn about the Klu Klux Klan and how it affected America. The Klan originally started in 1865 by a group of people and was widely known by 1870. The ideas leading to the formation of this group were popular back then because of everything that had happened in America as far as segregation and racism. They started something called lynching which is murdering someone by a mob, which they did frequently. They did their lynching on African Americans. 

Another topic I thought was very interesting was Rosa Parks. I'm pretty sure everyone knows of her, but she truly is an icon for anti-segregation. Parks is widely known for her outstanding act against racism that took place on a bus. In 1955, blacks were free, but there were still segregation laws. On December 1st of 1955, Rosa Parks got on the bus and took a seat near the front of the bus. Back then this was not allowed, and all African Americans were required to sit at the back of the bus and let a white man take her seat, but she refused. She stood her ground after being told many times to move and eventually got arrested for her acts. I think it was a very brave thing to do back then especially being part of two minorities: being African American and being a woman. Her actions paved the way through all of history and inspired many people to take a stand against racism.

 

"In the Heat of the Night" Reflection 

In one of our class times, our teacher let us watch a movie by the name of "In the Heat of the Night". While I am not normally a fan of older movies, I thoroughly enjoyed this one. If you like a good murder mystery, or even just a mystery, then you will enjoy this movie. It also has a good actor from another movie we watched, his name is Sidney Poitier. He was also in the movie "Band of Angels" that we watched a few weeks ago which I also enjoyed a lot. 

In this movie one officer found a dead man on the road. A little while later he found Virgil, a black police officer who was sitting on a bench waiting for his train to arrive. The officer blamed Virgil for the murder of this man he had found, not knowing the Virgil himself was a respected police officer from up North. The officer ended up bringing Virgil to the police station as a suspect, where he was met by the harsh chief of police. 

At the police station, Virgil was thoroughly investigated by the racist chief, and he quickly realized he was talking to a fellow officer, one who specialized in murder investigations. The chief ended up letting him go. If it wasn't for the wife of the murder victim, Virgil would've been on his way back up North and would've never seen them again, but she stepped in and convinced them that they needed his help because he was a specialist. He ended up helping them all the way through the investigation.

One of the reasons I really like this movie is because you can clearly see how America has changed through the years with racism. Nowadays a black officer is a very normal thing and no one would think twice about it, but back then it was very different. African Americans were free, but there were still a plethora of racists people in America, especially in the South. 

 

Brown v. Board of Education

In class, my group got assigned another court case called "Brown v. Board of Education" to do a mock trial on. We had to do the assignment in the perspective of Brown's side of the case. The anti-slavery side. In this case we each had to do different aspects of it. My task was to write about the overview of what was happening at the time of the case involving slavery specifically antislavery. 

Brown v. Board of Education is a case about a young girl required to go to an all black school that was far away from her home, instead of going to a white school that was very close to her house. The family of this girl was not happy with this and them, and lots of other black families gathered together and filed a lawsuit against the school systems in that county. They ended up winning the case on the argument from "Plessy v. Ferguson," that things should be "separate but equal". The court ended in a unanimous decision favoring the Brown family with a vote of 9-0. 

Here is my overview:

At this time, our anti-slavery activists have grown and have become a stronger voice due to all the racist instances our country has provided for us. We have made many advances in the past years some going back hundreds of years. The influence has spread to all aspects of life including music, jobs, relationships,  and how we treat people in everyday life. Within these aspects, we had important people that we could look up to in history. One very famous one being Joseph H. Rainey. Joseph H. Rainey was the first ever African American to be appointed in the House of Representatives. This was a huge deal to the abolitionists of America. Another one of these people being Thurgood Marshall. Marshall became a legal defense and was eventually elected to the Supreme Court. We have made our voice known to many people, some even as important as the President himself. A few years ago in 1946, President Harry S. Truman executed an order  that said a person of any race can participate in the armed forces. This was a huge step for our people and it has shown how much of an impact we can have if we stand up for what we believe in. 

Jim Crow laws have been around for some time now. They have been separating and discriminating blacks and whites for years and they have not stopped now. Jim Crow laws by definition are laws that enforced racial segregation specifically in the south. This was mainly for the Reconstruction era during the 1870s, but it was wrongly kept for many more years, and we are still dealing with the repercussions.

And now, in this court, I believe we can make a difference. I believe we can change the way society looks at races, so that we will not have to be separate, but yet see everyone as a person and all the same. 

 

Justice Harlan's Dissent 

In Plessy v. Ferguson, Homer Plessy boarded an all-white train car and was removed by the conductor because he was part black, even though he appeared to be white. Plessy was charged and put to trial under the "Separate Car Act". The trial ended with a 7 to 1 vote on still having separate cars for different races, but they have to be equal in quality, they called this the "Separate but equal Act".  The one Supreme Court Justice that did not agree with this decision was Justice John Marshall Harlan. 

John Harlan wrote a famous dissent of this case called "Harlan's Dissent". There are many things I agree with in this dissent, but here are a few main points I got from it. The first one I noticed was when he said the phrase, "our Constitution is colorblind." This quote really got me thinking. Our founding fathers of America wrote the Constitution in a time of slavery, yet the laws and phrases apply to everyone. Any race has to apply by the same laws that white people do. 

Another thing he said that was too long to quote, can be paraphrase into saying that these actions concluded by the court will cause hatred between the blacks and the whites and will do nothing but cause a divide in our country. This would cause more white individuals to become racist and even act out and harass against African Americans. It also has a big impact on everyone because it came from Supreme Court Justices who have a big reputation in American society. I believe this dissent from Justice Harlan still has an affect on people today. Everything he said is still true to this day, except our country is not as racist as it used to be. We can still look back at John Harlan's dissent and learn from it. 

 

What I Learned from Plessy v. Ferguson 

In our class the other day, half the class presented a mock trial about the case: Plessy v. Ferguson. Most people know about this case because it changed the discrimination in America, aka changing history. While African Americans were free during this time, they still were not treated the same. 

Riding the train back then was obviously very common, but it was not so common to have whites and blacks in the same train car. They actually had two separate cars dividing the two races. Now in the case of Homer Plessy who was part white and part black, where do you go? You don't know; and this was the cause of the Plessy v. Ferguson trial. Homer Plessy was more of white decent than black decent so he got in the white train car. Mind you he was only 1/8th percent of African American decent. The conductor did not like this idea for he was still part black so he asked him to move to a different car with the other African Americans. Plessy obviously went against this for he was mostly white. Because of his defiance, he was sent to jail. He took them to court.

Plessy claimed that this act of racial injustice violated his 13th and 14th amendment. The court thought otherwise. They said that it did not because the cars were equal it was just a separation of race and they did not title him as a slave. The decision of this case kind of bothered me because they said that this act was constitutional under the Lousiana Jim Crow Law. I feel as thought it should've been felt with better so that they felt like they did not even need to separate race, but that happened later in history. 

 

My EOTO: Joseph Rainey

Half of the people in my class got assigned a topic from the Reconstruction Era to teach the rest of the class about. I was out sick for the class that my group presented, so I presented by myself. My topic that was assigned to me was Joseph Rainey. 

Joseph Rainey was born into slavery on June 21st, 1832 in Georgetown, South Carolina. There is not much on the internet about his family life, but it does say how his father was a successful barber and made a profit for their family that way. This is how they earned their freedom, they bought it. That is how a lot of people back then gained their freedom. Because South Carolina would not let African Americans have an education, Joseph Rainey was never taught anything and was forced to learn a trade. He picked up his father's trade of being a barber, and he also became very popular and successful. A few years later, he met a woman by the name of Susan Cooper and married her. They later had three children named Joseph, Herbert, and Olive. 

A few years later, the Civil War began. During the Civil War, most men were forced to do something contributing to the war if they were able to, that included Rainey. He helped the Confederates make defenses and weapons. He also did many other things during the war, but they were smaller, less significant jobs. Rainey thought his family was at danger in South Carolina, so him and his family fled to Bermuda. In Bermuda they made a life for themselves. Joseph opened another barbershop and his wife Susan opened up a store where she hand-made dresses. After the Civil War was over, the Rainey family felt as if the U.S. was safe enough to come back to. 

Joseph Rainey became a crucial campaigner for the Republican Party. So much that when one of the Republicans in Congress could no longer finish out his term, the people nominated Rainey. Because of his noble work in Congress, the next year he was nominated into the House of Representatives and is now well known for being the first African American in the House of Representatives. His main goals while serving included equality and justice for everyone because he was once a slave. This was very good for his family as they were once enslaved as well. This was a big deal back then and it caused a lot of controversy as you would expect. Even though the backlash was not good, it was still a crucial part of history and the Reconstruction Era. The Reconstruction Era is basically society "reconstructing" itself and its moral values because of the North winning in the Civil War . At this period, slavery was starting to abolish, and more slaves were being set free in the South. Altogether, Joseph Rainey was a key figure in history and set the standard for the rest of United States government and acceptance in society.