Civil Rights Cases - Milestone Documents

Civil Rights Cases

( 1883 ) Commentary by R. Owen Williams, Yale University, and Lisa Paddock, Independent Scholar, Cape May County, New Jersey

Audience

As with most Supreme Court decisions, the justices’ audience included not only lawyers, lower court judges, and legislators at all levels but also in fact all Americans. The Civil Rights Cases decision had political significance for both the Republican and Democratic parties. Given the number of black lynchings in America throughout the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, it seems likely that groups such as the Ku Klux Klan interpreted the Civil Rights Cases decision as tacitly allowing local instances of racist mob rule.

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Joseph P. Bradley (Library of Congress)

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