Legal Aspects of the Negro Problem

Abstract

THROUGHOUT the history of the Negro in America, court decisions have clarified his relationship to the white race. The Dred Scott decision comes readily to mind as an event crystallising two forms of sentiment which later struggled for supremacy. Since the Civil War, hardly an important constitutional question has come before the Supreme Court which has not had some reference to the still vexed and disputed question of the Negro's status in this country. This is true to the extent that the entire question of states' rights, involving many court cases that had nothing directly to do with the American Negro, has hinged upon differences in attitude on these problems mainly sectional. The effect of the Negro, and his part in white America's legal fabric has occasioned a number of books and could easily be made the subject of an extended study. Such a study would show, we are convinced, that no single other set of problems has had such a profound effect in determining the structure and phrasing of American law, and court interpretation of the law, as the problems raised by the Negro's presence here. Our subject is necessarily more limited than this broad consideration of the form and tendency of democracy as expressed in the constitutional provisions and statutes. We are to consider primarily a few outstanding aspects of the Negro's legal status during recent years as showing something of his organic relations in the social structure of the country. The cases that have arisen for adjudication, and that will be considered here, touch democracy at its roots. They concern the right to participation in selfgovernment; the right to safety of the person and property; the right to due process of law; and questions of social procedure ranging from Jim Crow on southern railways to the right to dine in a New York restaurant or to sit in a