Extemporaneous musings, occasionally poetic, about life in its richly varied dimensions, especially as relates to history, theology, law, literature, science, by one who is an attorney, ordained minister, historian, writer, and African American.
Monday, January 20, 2020
SUPREME COURT AND BLACK PEOPLE-POWER
SUPREME SUPREME AND BLACK PEOPLE-POWER
The U.S. Supreme Court has definitely taken to its singular role as the sole interpreter of our often amended Constitution!
“Dred Scott v. Sanford” presaged a civil war in 1857 saying blacks, bond or free, lacked rights and personhood under law .
That defining case’s apocalyptic disgrace caused the great abolitionist, John Brown, to leave the Kansas-Missouri “Border Wars” to organize an attack on the federal armory at Harper’s Ferry Virginia, in 1859 to arm the slaves!
That blunt decision also created the dynamic tension for the promotion of a Republican Party that elected its candidate , Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, as United States President .
This election led to secession, that led to Civil War, black freedom war!
Later , in 1866, the New Orleans “Slaughter-House” cases construed the 14th Amendment to apply to white Louisiana butchers’ market dispute, applying what was ratified exclusively for blacks to whites in 1866.
Later the Supreme Court construed the 1867 “Colfax Louisiana” voting rights massacre of 200 blacks to be a state law, not federal law, violation; so it dismissed the white former Confederate killers ‘ (now police) federal convictions which freed the supremacists, and gave a clear signal to continue to all terrorists!
Later, still in “The Civil Rights Cases”, it declared as unconstitutional the “Civil Rights Act of 1875” in 1881. That Act, passed in the final days of short “Reconstruction” had mandated equal public accommodations of the blacks in all public places, at the pains of civil suits and criminal prosecutions of violators!
That reversal led up to “Plessy v. Ferguson” in 1896, with its “separate but equal “ philosophy , false doctrine , that was overturned by “Brown v. Board” in 1954, which opened up segregated facilities in legal theory. However the reversed law of segregation required sustained civil rights protests, demands, demonstrations, fighting , boycotts, litigation and more murders to secure!
“Croson v. Richmond” in 1989 said black political power cannot be used to secure economic black power, as done by whites.
“Graham v. Connor” also in post-Reagan 1989 said that the police can use deadly force subjectively if they in fear for their lives, whatever the facts.
“Citizens United” in 2010 said “strike up the money band!” Open up the unlimited election money floodgates in federal elections to private persons, to PAC’s , to corporations, to labor unions, even foreigners.
Thus, the festival of big election money begot President Donald Trump. And Michael Bloomberg and billionaires for days!
Now, 2020, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts will preside in the Senate in the impeachment trial of President Donald John Trump.