The law is not an ass; the asses are the justices who deliberately misinterpret the law.” — Chilu The Elder

PART I

IN ITS LONG – and occasionally illustrious history – the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has had many inglorious days. Regarding descendants of Africans in America, this Court has been a pain, a real pain somewhere unmentionable.

All shall be revealed.

In practical terms, many decisions of the US Supreme Court led directly to the deaths of tens of thousands of Negroes during their enslavement, and after slavery ended in 1865. Without any ambiguity, the Supreme Court of the United States has been used by white supremacists to ensure that Negroes, niggers, African-Americans – take your pick – remained in a lower caste to white Anglo-Saxons. This malign influence will continue as long as white supremacists in America remain a viable force, which they still are, perched on the very highest judicial, social, political, and economic rungs.

1. ++Before the Civil War – The Slave Codes Era

In 1857, the US Supreme Court passed one of its worst judgements ever in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case.

The short story is that Mr Dred Scott was a slave who moved with his white “owner” from a slave state to a free state. While in the free state, the white “owner” died, and Mr Scott, his wife, and 2 girl children ended up the chattels of the widow of the owner. The unit then moved back to a slave state. Mr Scott tried to buy his freedom from his new owner, but the woman refused. So, he sued to be set free because the Scott family had lived in a free state for some time. After many years of trials, the state court and the federal courts ultimately refused this request for freedom. Eventually, the case ended up at the Supreme Court of the United States. SCOTUS ruled that the Constitution of the United States was not meant to include American citizenship for black people, irregardless of whether they were enslaved or free. Therefore, the Justices opined, the rights and privileges it confers upon American citizens could not apply to black people. The Court ruled that: Black people “are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution, and can, therefore, claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.”

The Chief Justice then claimed that evidence showed that from the time of the Constitution’s drafting in 1787, a “perpetual and impassable barrier was intended to be erected between the white race and the one which they had reduced to slavery.” 2 out of 9 Justices dissented. The other 7 had kin selection, propinquity, and melanin on their minds. With this verdict, there was a joyous outpouring of gratitude and relief from the southern states. The slaveholders were on cloud nine. Elsewhere in America there was “unmitigated wrath”.

The Supreme Court of American was asked to interpret who deserved to be an American citizen, and they botched that up completely and deliberately. At the time of the Dred Scott case, Chief Justice Taney said, “Black people were a subordinate and inferior class of beings with no rights which the white man was bound to respect”.

Wow.

This heinous decision by an overtly racist court was overturned in 1866, after the Civil War, by the Fourteenth Constitution Amendment giving citizenship to all Americans. However, this was soon subverted by another execrable decision by SCOTUS in 1883, as elaborated below.

1. During the Reconstruction Era – The Black Codes Era.

The slave states lost the Civil War, and the Yankee army occupied the south from 1865 to 1877. Officially, the Reconstruction Era was from 1867 to 1877.  During this Reconstruction Era, Congress enacted constitution amendments to free slaves, give them full citizenship, and give them the vote. It then enacted civil rights acts (also known as enforcement acts or force acts) to penalise anyone denying emancipated ethnic Africans enjoyment of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Constitution Amendments. In some cases, the Acts were also known as Ku Klux Klan Acts or Klan Acts. Led by Republicans, Congress endeavoured to consolidate the status of Negroes and Native-Americans as equal to Anglo-Saxon Americans.

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 gave rights to all Americans to own property, give evidence in court, sue, do business, and make a legal contract. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 prohibited discrimination in public places and facilities. The First Enforcement Acts of 1870 (AKA Klan Act 1) and Second and Third Enforcement Act (Klan Act II) of 1871 had similar goals of protecting Negroes from white racists and securing their rights as citizens who should also exercise their right to vote. The Acts gave the federal government and the president powers to prosecute white criminals and even declare a state of emergency and use the National Guard to quell violence against Negroes. The result was that within a year, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), which was made of mostly former Confederate soldiers, was virtually broken by the Klan Acts.

The southerners resented their defeat in the Civil War deeply. They also hated anyone coming from the north to do business or politics in their states. These were called carpetbaggers. Equally, they despised with venom the loss of the free labour and the wealth engendered by their African slaves. They loathed the now freedmen and could not see past their label as former slaves. To this day, there are tens of millions of white Americans, many in the highest offices of the land, who have the same difficulty.

The racists in the south were down but not out. They reacted violently and murderously to the blacks having these new rights. Lynchings and serious human rights abuses became the order of the day. The slave states through private militia and hate groups like the KKK terrorised and murdered many now free Negroes.

Through Black Codes the racists tried to negate all the freedoms and rights of the freedmen.

The federal government, after passing the constitution amendments, civil rights acts, and enforcement statutes mentioned above, walked the talk. They tried to protect the new Americans by prosecuting the perpetrators of crimes against Negroes in federal courts.

PART II

1. The Post Reconstruction Era – The Jim Crow Era.

The victorious army of the north departed from the south in 1877. This marked the end of the Reconstruction Era, and soon after, Jim Crow laws were enacted in the south. The north had its own segregation-equivalents. The north had structural racism in the form of ghettos, redlining, gerrymandering, etc. In many states, there were racial covenants to bar Negroes from certain residential areas. Some deeds of sale demanded that the property was never to be conveyed, leased, or mortgaged to Negroes.

The Negroes in former slave states were left at the mercy of their former slave masters. Both the governments of southern states and individuals went after the slaves with a vengeance. They intensified their campaign of violence and murder and the curtailing of the Negroes’ newly-given rights. In the decade of 1890 to 1899, on average, between 80 to 150 Negroes were lynched each year in the former slave states. Several massacres of blacks in the south also occurred. One of the most infamous happened in a town called Colfax in Louisiana, in 1873. The whole fracas was over an election dispute. Hundreds of Negroes were surrounded at a court building, and about 150 were slaughtered, some execution-style.

Out of the dozens of whites who carried out the massacre, 7 were arrested and charged. The culprits, Cruikshank and six others, were prosecuted in a federal court and found guilty. Cruikshank and his friends were charged with conspiracy to deprive the blacks of their constitutional rights. They were found guilty of breaching the 1870 enforcement act or Klan Law. They appealed to the US Supreme Court.

Enter the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS).

SCOTUS came riding to the rescue of the defeated southern states. The court set about dismantling the constitution amendments, the civil rights acts, and the enforcement statutes that were meant to make Negroes fully American. What could Congress and the federal government enforce on the states? In a series of rulings over many decades starting around 1870 SCOTUS ruled the following:

1. 1873 Slaughterhouse cases. The Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment, giving Negroes citizenship, did not apply to most state laws. The Court stated that the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment only protects the legal rights that are associated with federal citizenship and not those that pertain to state citizenship. An example of a federal right that is protected by the Fourteenth is the right to seek federal office. All other rights that have to do with state citizenship are not protected by that Constitution Amendment.
2. 1882: SCOTUS declared Enforcement Acts unconstitutional.
3. 1883. The Court struck down the anti-discrimination provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1875. The Court ruled that segregation was constitutional if done by states. The amendments and enforcement laws against discrimination only applied to individuals and not states. That is, states could discriminate, but individuals could not. The Justices ruled that barring discrimination in hotels, houses, and other places was unconstitutional. This was the infamous 1883 ruling.
4. 1896. In the Plessy v Ferguson decision, the Court re-enforced the laws of segregation by states. Plessy lost this case in all the state courts and appealed to the SCOTUS. The Court ruled that segregation was legal as long as the state provided equal but separate facilities. The Court said separate does not equal segregation or discrimination. If this was done, then segregation was not discrimination. In practice, the above dubious and heretical rulings allowed the southern states to introduced separate and unequal facilities in the public sphere, with impunity. To paraphrase the august Court, they stated that “There is a fallacy that the separation of the races in all spheres of life meant that the black race is inferior. That inference is not in the laws that govern separation, but it is one that the blacks themselves construct.” Wow. The blacks were imagining things! The Court also said the law does not state that the separate facilities must be better for white people. Therefore, there is no fault in the law, and so it cannot be found to be against something it does not lay down. For SCOTUS, 1896 was another year of great infamy.
5. 1876. United States v Cruikshank et al. In this vital case, the Court let down the Negro population massively. In subsequent years, this decision led to the extra-judicial killings of thousands of Negroes, without anyone being held accountable. In summary, the SCOTUS ruled that at a federal level, with regard to injury or murder, the new civil rights laws could not be used to prosecute criminals who harmed or killed Negroes. This was because “for their protection and enjoyment of Rights, the people must look to state governments and not the National [Federal] Government. The federal government is restricted from infringing on the Bill of Rights, like the right of people to keep and bear arms. But the Constitution does not restrict private citizens from denying other citizens the right to keep and bear arms and any other right in the Bill of Rights. Therefore, when other people deny them such rights, the aggrieved must look to ‘municipal legislation’ for restitution and not the Constitution. It is not the federal government that would have infringed on their rights, but individuals who are subject to state laws.” The Court ruled on the rights of citizenship as enshrined in the Fourteenth Constitution Amendment, as well as on the right to free assembly enshrined in the First Amendment and on the right to bear arms enshrined in the Second Amendment. The Court also differentiated between state and national citizenship. In simple terms, it is the responsibility of state courts to try murder cases and not federal courts, unless it’s proven that the murder or other criminality against a black person is racially motivated.

Wow.

These rulings by SCOTUS gave wings to white supremacists and paramilitary groups in the southern states like the White League in Louisiana and the Red Shirts in Mississippi and North Carolina. This was a passport for hate groups to kill black people. At this time, states worked hand in glove with miscreant white hate groups. The states did not prosecute these groups and individuals at all when they assaulted or killed Negroes. As a result, these murder squads operated with impunity as the avenues for any appeal to federal courts and the US Supreme Court were effectively barred. SCOTUS made America a legal apartheid country and a socially Kafkaesque world for Negroes. SCOTUS gave the Redeemers a measure of success to atone for their loss of the Civil War. The SCOTUS justices did not live in a “reality TV show” where someone could shout “Cut!” and go to the aid of a participant in distress. The justices were well aware of all the life-threatening implications that their judgements would have on the Negroes.

They did not give a fart.

 

 

PART III

Paramilitary groups in the former slave sates went about openly terrorising the Negroes. They used violence and murder to intimidate blacks and deter them from voting and exercising other rights during the reconstruction period and in the decades following that. The southern whites, with the help of SCOTUS, successfully achieved the total emasculation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and the civil rights acts/enforcement statutes. The south had legislative and judicial authority to segregate. They passed segregation laws which if challenged were supported by the Justices of SCOTUS. This was segregation de jure. Segregation de facto was by custom. Segregation de facto was also practiced in the north. In practice, the rulings of SCOTUS meant that:

1. The federal government and Congress were prevented from protecting Negroes from state terror. This was nonsensical given that decades earlier the same Court had allowed Congress to interfere in state rights by enforcing the fugitive slave law.
2. States could legally discriminate.
3. By states turning a blind eye, individuals could also openly discriminate against people of colour and even kill them and get away with murder.
4. The southern states enacted Jim Crow laws as a response to these glorious victories in the US Supreme Court.
5. The northern states won the war but lost the peace.
6. The southern states lost the war but won the peace.
7. The Negroes remained in a caste below that of white people. The result was that for 100 years, the former southern states defined race relations in America in their image, a tainted and malign image.

During the last 100 years, there have been some changes.

• 1954. Brown v The Board of Education. SCOTUS decided that it was not okay to segregate schools. However, they were content with segregation continuing in all other public spaces, and in private spaces like bedrooms. Bestiality was not allowed, and in some states neither was sex between a black person and a white person.
• 1964. The Jim Crow laws were struck down with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in theory. This Civil Rights Act ended segregation in public places. It also banned discrimination in employment based on colour, race, sex, religion and national origin, in theory.
• 1965. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibited racial discrimination in voting, in theory.
• 1967. SCOTUS finally decided that it was okay for black people to have sex with white people, meaning this act was no longer equivalent to bestiality! 1967!!
• 1968. The Civil Rights Act of 1968 prohibited discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, and national origin, in theory.
• 1995. Mississippi state legislature assented to the law to end slavery (the 1865 Thirteenth Amendment!)
• 2000. Alabama assented to the law to end the ban on interracial marriages.
• 2013. Mississippi registered the law to end slavery. Wow. 1954, 1964, 1965, 1967 and 1968, 1995, 2000, 2013 CE!

Over the centuries, what SCOTUS has overtly proclaimed was that only white lives mattered, not black lives. The blacks could hang, the Court more or less said, with no effort at any nuance. And hang them is exactly what the white brethren – for lack of a better Biblical word – have done regularly to their ethnic African brethren over many decades. Indisputably, American racism was the father of Master Jim Crow. The Confederacy was the mother. SCOTUS Esquire was the proud midwife who ensured that the vile baby Jim Crow was born alive and kicking. Jim Crow lived over 80 years and only died in 1968. He left behind several wives and tens of millions of children. Many of these children are still struggling to understand how and why people of a different colour are supposedly equal to them.

From America’s independence in 1776 to 1976, the verdict of Africans on the conduct of SCOTUS with regard to its handling of their descendants in America is a clear fail. Once the statues of racist Americans were removed from public squares into museums, the next stage will be to name and shame dead racist Justices of SCOTUS who had caused so much pain and deaths of ethnic Africans in America. This is 2015 CE and counting; what will people say in one hundred years’ time about SCOTUS and minorities in America?

Postscript 1.

Among the many reasons listed for the American Civil War are the 1857 Dred Scott Supreme Court judgement, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, the seminal Stroud’s Slave Law (1827 and 1856) by George M. Stroud and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s twin masterpieces of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), and A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1853). Apparently, President Abraham Lincoln met Mrs Stowe. At that meeting, Abe Lincoln is alleged to have said, “Is this the little lady who made this big war?” or words to that effect. This story is almost certainly apocryphal.

If the story is not apocryphal, then without realising it, Abe Lincoln was talking about the butterfly effect in Chaos Theory. An unknown woman writes a novel around a slave called Uncle Tom, which one person reads, then a second and a third person. This is followed, over many months, by millions more people reading the novel. Soon, the novel’s ripple effect is such that the whole chaotic system becomes more chaotic. Together with other enablers, the whole system soon reaches a tipping point. If only 3 people had read Uncle Tom’s Cabin – for instance, her husband, her brother, and her pastor – the history of the world would probably be very different. However, millions read the book. In the chaotic situation that existed at the time in America, Harriet Beecher Stowe was only one of many butterflies, some unknown. The fifth reason given for the Civil War was the caning of Senator Charles Sumner on the Senate floor in 1856. This loss of reasoning by the assailant, the slave-holding senator Brooks and his Democrat senate cronies, galvanised the anti-slavery Republican Party and helped them win the 1860 presidential election. Come 1861, the rest became history. 353

Postscript 2.

It is sobering to contemplate the amount and range of abuse that western governments allowed to be visited on African slaves and their descendants. The general trend, in America, was that states moved from societies with slaves, in the colonial period before the American Revolution, to slave societies in the antebellum period before the Civil War.

Postscript 3.

In 1954, because of the surprising Brown v The Board of Education decision by SCOTUS, white supremacists in the south formed White Citizens’ Councils. These were widespread networks formed to oppose integration in schools but also to stop Negroes from voting. There were tens of thousands of members. The Councils used the police to intimidate and clobber black people trying to register to vote and those trying to vote. In addition, against black people who wanted to vote or send their children to white schools, the Council members unleashed a whole plethora of economic sanctions. These sanctions included denial of loans, evictions from rented properties, firings from work, foreclosures, and boycotts of any economic activity done by the impertinent wanna-be-black voter. All in all, one can be in awe of the determination, the energy, and the effort that these racists put in to keep their unjust system going.