Existing comment:
1896 Plessy v Ferguson:
In 1892, Homer A Plessy, a black, is jailed after boarding a railroad car reserved for white people only. Four years later, his cases reaches the US Supreme Court, which decides against him, ruling that states may provide blacks with "separate but equal" facilities for transportation, education and public accommodations such as hotels and theaters.
1904 White orphans removed:
The New York Foundling Hospital,. a Catholic-run orphanage, sends 40 young orphans to two Arizona copper-mining towns for adoption by Mexican-immigrant Catholic families there. Whites in the towns are outraged, taking the children from their new families by force. The Catholic Church sues to get the children back, but in 1906 the US Supreme Court rules that the abduction was legal.
"The child in question is a white Caucasian child... abandoned... to the keeping of a Mexican Indian, [who is] by reason of his race, mode of living, habits and education, unfit to have the custody, care, and education of the child."
-- Justice William R Day, majority opinion, 1906
"Religion has influenced and shaped concepts of race. This event illustrates how race and religion intersect."
-- Mary Margaret Overbey, anthropologist, American Anthropological Association
Early 1900s "One drop rule":
According to this belief, a person thought to have any amount of African blood -- even "one drop" -- is classified as black. The notion, which has no scientific basis, dates back to American colonial times, when any child born to a slave was automatically considered a slave, even if one parent was white. During the segregation era, the "one drop rule" becomes codified in law and custom, appearing on legal documents ranging from birth records to marriage licenses to census forms.
"If it is proven that a man has even 1 per cent of African blood, he becomes a Negro every time; the 99 per cent of Anglo-Saxon blood counts for nothing -- the man always falls to our pile in the count of the races. It takes 100 per cent to make a white man, and 1 per cent will make a Negro every time. So, you see, we are a stronger race than the white race."
-- Booker T Washington, "An Address Before the National Educational Association" (1900)
1909 Japanese forbidden to marry whites:
California passes a law adding the Japanese to the list of those prevented from marrying whites. |