Dr Michael Ross
speaker
223 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2026
last heard 6 Aug
Dr Michael Ross’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And then once Reconstruction ends, the Civil Rights Act of 1875 is somewhat ignored.
And it's that law that they hope in particular will be used to challenge the Separate Car Act.
However, there is an intervening Supreme Court decision, also quite famous, the 1883 civil rights cases.
And the 1883 civil rights cases are brought by businessmen in the North, in the South, in the West, who did not like the fact that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 forced them to admit on equal terms black patrons.
And they sue saying that this is a private business.
The federal government, whatever the 13th and 14th Amendment says, doesn't have the authority to reach private businesses.
And these cases, they consolidate into the civil rights cases of 1883.
And in that decision, the Supreme Court, in an 8-1 vote, agrees.
And they say that the language of the 14th Amendment says no state can deny equal protection.
No state can deny due process rights.
However, businesses aren't the state.
And in an opinion by Justice Joseph Bradley, they say, at some point, African Americans freed from slavery have to stop being the special favorites of the law.
And the one dissenter in that case is one of the most fascinating pieces of the Plessy story.
And it's the dissenting Justice John Marshall Harlan.
And Harlan is also going to dissent in the Plessy decision.
And Harlan is fascinating because he comes from a slave-owning family in Kentucky and
He is a Kentucky Unionist in that his family does not join the Confederacy, as some people in Kentucky did.
As you know, Kentucky tries to remain neutral in the war.
He fights in the Union Army, but initially he's saying, I'm just fighting to save the Union as it is.
I'm opposed to the Emancipation Proclamation.
Showing 81–100 of 223 · page 5 of 12
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