With the ongoing conflict between Donald Trump and the news media, including the President blocking the access of selected news outlets to the White House and vilifying journalists, it’s important to revisit the struggle for a free press since the early history of the United States and its role in a democratic society. [Read more…] about New York’s Historical Defenses of Freedom of the Press
SCOTUS
Civil Rights Leaders and RFK Meet in NYC, 1963
During a television interview broadcast in March 1964, Malcolm X famously said “If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there’s no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that’s not progress. The progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven’t even begun to pull the knife out, much less heal the wound. …They won’t even admit the knife is there.” [Read more…] about Civil Rights Leaders and RFK Meet in NYC, 1963
19th Century NY Law and Birthright Citizenship
In August 1829 the passenger ship Emily arrived from Liverpool and anchored in New York Harbor. Like many 19th century ships entering New York’s bustling port, Emily carried migrants intent on making a new life in the city. Passages such as the Emily’s were commonplace but the actions of her master, William Thompson, proved exceptional.
Thompson, likely on the order of shipowner George Miln, flagrantly ignored an 1824 New York State law intended to regulate the flow of migrants into the metropolis. [Read more…] about 19th Century NY Law and Birthright Citizenship
The Voting Rights Act & The Great Betrayal of 1877
On April 24, 1877, on orders from President Rutherford B. Hayes, federal troops withdrew from the state house in Louisiana — the last federally defended state house in the South — just 12 years after the end of the Civil War.
This withdrawal marked the end of Reconstruction and paved the way for the unrestrained resurgence of white supremacist rule in the South, carrying with it the rapid deterioration of political rights for Black Americans.
What began with Hayes’s elevation to the Presidency following the disputed Election of 1876, is now having dramatic political consequences 150 years later. [Read more…] about The Voting Rights Act & The Great Betrayal of 1877
Watchdog, Historians Sue to Block Trump Effort to Evade Presidential Records Law
American Oversight and the American Historical Association have filed suit challenging a sweeping memorandum from the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel that declared the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional and that President Donald Trump “need not further comply” with its requirements, effectively encouraging the president to violate federal law.
The lawsuit argues that the memo relies on virtually no judicial authority and defies binding U.S. Supreme Court precedent outright, representing what they say is “a radical attempt to nullify a law that has governed presidential records for nearly half a century.” [Read more…] about Watchdog, Historians Sue to Block Trump Effort to Evade Presidential Records Law
When Indians Were Barred From Citizenship by the Supreme Court
On February 19, 1923, the US Supreme Court issued a ruling legally barring all Indians from becoming U.S. citizens and revoking citizenship from many who had attained it.
Bhagat Singh Thind (1892-1967), an Indian Sikh man born in Punjab, migrated to the U.S. in 1913. After enlisting in the U.S. Army and serving in World War One, Thind applied and obtained approval for citizenship in 1920. [Read more…] about When Indians Were Barred From Citizenship by the Supreme Court
The End of Reconstruction & The Civil Rights Cases of 1883
Shortly after the Supreme Court handed down the Civil Rights Cases in 1883 [which declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional], a mass meeting was called for Lincoln Hall in the nation’s capital. Two prominent Republican orators — one black and one white — were the featured speakers. Frederick Douglass — the runaway slave who had become an avid student of the Constitution in the course of his career as an abolitionist — spoke first.
Robert G. Ingersoll [born in 1833 in Yates County, NY] — highly valued as a Republican orator despite his outspoken atheist views — closed the program. In some ways, the event was a political rally, similar to others that had characterized both the long battle against slavery and the heady early days of Reconstruction. [Read more…] about The End of Reconstruction & The Civil Rights Cases of 1883
Fugitive Slaves, Kidnapping & State Government Response
Although not authorized to do so by a strict constructionist reading of the Constitution’s fugitive slave clause, Congress enacted the first Fugitive Slave Act in 1793. Northern states blocked effective enforcement of the federal law, leading to a southern outcry for more stringent legislation.
The sectional crisis precipitated by the California Statehood Act in 1850 provided the opportunity for passage of a harsher Fugitive Slave Act, which became part of the Compromise of 1850. [Read more…] about Fugitive Slaves, Kidnapping & State Government Response
The Battle of Newburgh, White Citizens Councils & New York State
Despite theoretically desegregating schools in 1938, New York State effectively continued to operate on the basis of an 1899 state ruling that upheld its segregated schools.
Then, in May 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Brown v. Board of Education which required an end to racial segregation in public schools.
The decision contributed to a reordering of living patterns and an eventual realignment of the political parties across the United States. [Read more…] about The Battle of Newburgh, White Citizens Councils & New York State
Justice Robert Jackson & The American Legal Tradition
During the United States Supreme Court’s 1944-1945 term, the Justices heard three final days of oral arguments in the week that began on Monday, April 30, 1945. Justice Robert H. Jackson (1892 – 1954) missed some of these arguments. He might not have been fully prepared for those that he did attend. In that week, the Supreme Court work was not his primary concern.
Beginning on April 25, 1945, President Harry S. Truman had recruited Justice Jackson to represent the U.S. as its chief prosecutor, with allies, of the Nazi German leaders who were on the brink of being defeated militarily and captured. [Read more…] about Justice Robert Jackson & The American Legal Tradition
A History of Education in New York: Twentieth-Century Trends
A major educational development of the early twentieth century was the rise of high schools. Public high schools gradually replaced the academies in the late 1800s. This change arose partly from the changing notion of “public,” with independent schools no longer seen as completely fulfilling public education responsibilities.
The rising cost of first-rate secondary education and the emerging urban middle class that desired it, also contributed to the move toward high schools. In city after city, academies were transformed into public secondary schools and architecturally impressive public high schools opened. [Read more…] about A History of Education in New York: Twentieth-Century Trends
The Legacy of Belva Lockwood
In the quiet farmlands of Niagara County, New York, a woman was born who would lay the foundation for some of the greatest achievements in American legal history. Her name was Belva Ann Bennet Lockwood (1830-1917).
While she never achieved the iconic stature of Ruth Bader Ginsburg — no Hollywood films or t-shirts with her face — Lockwood’s legacy is essential today, as we face growing threats to the integrity of our judiciary and the principles of justice she fought for. [Read more…] about The Legacy of Belva Lockwood
Italian-Americans as Alien Enemies: Westchester Opera Star Ezio Pinza
In 1766 jurist William Blackstone published his Commentaries on the Law of England in which he defined the term “enemy alien” as it was understood in common law. He confirmed that during a time of war “alien enemies have no rights, no privileges.” The Crown exercises absolute power. In a simple turn of phrase, the Oxford professor anticipated the agony of millions of migrants. [Read more…] about Italian-Americans as Alien Enemies: Westchester Opera Star Ezio Pinza
Robert Moses’s Imperial Niagara and St. Lawrence Megaprojects
We recently passed the 50th anniversary of the release of Robert Caro’s Pulitzer-prize-winning book about Robert Moses: The Power Broker. Exhaustively comprehensive, Caro’s monumental tome nonetheless virtually ignores one of the most fascinating chapters of Moses’s career: his time as Chairman of the Power Authority of the State of New York (PASNY) from 1954 to 1962.
While heading PASNY, known today as the New York Power Authority, the legendary New York City builder oversaw the remaking of Niagara Falls and the St. Lawrence River for hydropower. [Read more…] about Robert Moses’s Imperial Niagara and St. Lawrence Megaprojects
Martin Luther King in the Catskills in 1960
In October of 1960, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a speech entitled “The Future of Integration” at the annual convention of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union in the Catskills at the Laurels Country Club in Sackett Lake, Sullivan County, NY.
Less than two weeks after that October 8th appearance, he was sitting in jail for attempting to integrate the lunch counter at Rich’s Department Store in Atlanta, Georgia. [Read more…] about Martin Luther King in the Catskills in 1960
1915: Women Who Marry A Non-Citizen Lose Their Citizenship
On December 6, 1915, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision upholding the Expatriation Act of 1907, in which the Republican dominated Congress mandated that “any American woman who marries a foreigner shall take the nationality of her husband.”
Upon marriage, regardless of where the couple resided, the woman’s legal identity morphed into her husband’s and stripped American women of their citizenship when they married a non-citizen. [Read more…] about 1915: Women Who Marry A Non-Citizen Lose Their Citizenship
The Political Development of American Debt Relief
Americans have a long history with debt. They also have a long history of mobilizing for debt relief. Throughout the nineteenth century, indebted citizens demanded government protection from their financial burdens, challenging readings of the Constitution that exalted property rights at the expense of the vulnerable.
Their appeals shaped the country’s periodic experiments with state debt relief and federal bankruptcy law, constituting a pre-industrial safety net. Yet, the twentieth century saw the erosion of debtor politics and the eventual retrenchment of bankruptcy protections. [Read more…] about The Political Development of American Debt Relief
1927: Supreme Court Declares Asian Americans ‘Colored’ & Upholds Banning Them from White Schools
On November 21, 1927, in Gong Lum v. Rice, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the Chinese American Lum family and upheld Mississippi’s power to force nine-year-old Martha Lum to attend a “colored school” outside the district in which she lived.
Applying the “separate but equal” doctrine established in 1896’s Plessy v. Ferguson decision, the Court held that the maintenance of separate schools based on race was “within the constitutional power of the state legislature to settle, without intervention of the federal courts.” [Read more…] about 1927: Supreme Court Declares Asian Americans ‘Colored’ & Upholds Banning Them from White Schools
What Does The Election of 1800 Have To Do With 2024?
Although historians generally disagree, many people think history repeats itself. Are there any parallels between the Election of 1800 and the contest for the presidency in 2024?
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had been debating different viewpoints about the Constitution since they first worked on the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Adams feared giving the people too much control while Jefferson thought the presidency had too much power. [Read more…] about What Does The Election of 1800 Have To Do With 2024?
Oct 1883: An Albany County Justice Helps Strike Down Civil Rights
Radical Republican Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts introduced the Civil Rights Act in 1870 as an amendment to a general amnesty bill for former Confederates who had fought against the United States during the Civil War. His bill guaranteed all citizens, regardless of color, access to accommodations, theatres, public schools, churches, and cemeteries. It also forbid the barring of any person from jury service on account of race, and provided that all lawsuits brought under the new law would be tried in federal, not traditionally racist state courts.
Sumner predicted that the Civil Rights Act would be the greatest achievement of Reconstruction, saying “Very few measures of equal importance have ever been presented.” [Read more…] about Oct 1883: An Albany County Justice Helps Strike Down Civil Rights