 Rehabilitation Act (1973) |
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This act regulated the Department of Labor and specifically sought to limit discrimination based on disabilities. It required affirmative action in federal employment and created and extended civil rights to people with disabilities. While not as maybe far-reaching as the Americans with Disabilities Act, this act was passed nearly 20 years earlier.
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| Remembering a dark past, renewing resolve for the future (2019) |
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This article from the Omaha World Herald describes Omaha's official observance of the 100-year anniversary of the lynching of Will Brown. Omaha Mayor, Jean Stothert, spoke at the commemoration calling Will Brown's lynching one of the darkest days in our history.
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| Report of the Woman's Rights Convention Held at Seneca Falls (1848) |
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Generally credited as the first call for equal rights for women, this document is the result of the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848. It calls for suffrage rights for women, as well as equal rights in all aspects of society. The convention was organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, both women were from abolitionist families, highlighting a sharp divide between women’s rights advocates before and after the Civil War.
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| Rights of Black Men (1791) |
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This commentary was written by Connecticut anti-slavery advocate Abraham Bishop in support of the Haitian Revolution. Bishop's work was printed in the Boston newspaper, The Argus.
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| Ritual on Admission of Indians to Full American Citizenship (1918) |
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This set of instructions for conducting the Ritual on Admission of Indians to Full American Citizenship was produced by the Department of the Interior in 1918 so that such ceremonies could take place across the Western reservations. It includes the opening remarks from the Representative of the Department, followed by instructions for each participant to undergo to receive U.S. citizenship. There are separate instructions for men and women. The document reveals the centrality of performance during naturalization events for Native Americans.
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| Roberto Alvarez, et al. v. E. L. Owen, et al. (1931) |
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This case was the first successful school desegregation case in the United States, decided fifteen years before Brown v. Board of Education. When the school board in Lemon Grove, California, attempted to build a separate school for students of Mexican origin, the court ruled that the segregation violated state laws which considered people of Mexican descent to be white.
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| Roe v. Wade (1973) |
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Roe v. Wade is the landmark Supreme Court decision that extended the right to privacy to the ability for women to obtain abortion care. The decision was overturned in the 2022 decision of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, returning legislation on abortion care to the states.
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| Royal Proclamation of 1763 |
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Following the Treaty of Paris, the Royal Proclamation of 1765 ceded all North American French territory to the British government. The proclamation set up governments for the new British territories. It also limited settlement past a line drawn down the Appalachian Mountains. As a reward to the soldiers who fought in the war, the document also outlines the amount of land soldiers of different ranks were entitled to.
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| Savanna's Act (2018) |
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Savanna's Act (also known as the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Act) addressed federal and tribal jurisdictional cooperation concerning issues of violence and disappearance in the Native American community. The law is named after Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, a member of the Spirit Lake Nation of North Dakota who was murdered in 2017. The act was signed into law in 2020.
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| Scott Act (1888) |
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The Scott Act rejected the guarantee of free travel for Chinese people provided by the Angell Treaty of 1880. The act stated that Chinese laborers who left the U.S. would not be able to return.
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 Seamen's Protection Certificate for James Forten Dunbar (1810) |
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Seamen's Protection Certificates were documents authorized by an act of Congress in 1796 to protect U.S. sailors from being impressed into the service of foreign navies. For Black Americans, they also served as a way to document their free status. This certificate was issued for James Forten Dunbar, a free man of mixed ancestry who spent a long career at sea as a sailor and sail-maker aboard merchant and naval vessels, including service in the U.S. Navy during the Civil War.
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| Sedition Act (1798) |
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This is one of four acts known collectively as the Alien and Sedition Acts. These acts were passed by a Federalist-controlled Congress applied restrictions to immigration and speech in the U.S. They were highly controversial and contributed to the Federalist defeat in the election of 1800. After 1802, only the Alien Enemies Act remained in force, and has continued to be invoked during times of war. The Sedition Act made it illegal to print "false, scandalous and malicious writing" against the U.S. government. It was used to suppress speech critical of the Federalist Party.
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| Selective Service Act (1917) |
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This act authorized the U.S. government to raise a national army through compulsory enlistment via a draft. The military was segregated at the time of World War I, and Black soldiers were mostly relegated to labor roles.
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| Selective Training and Service Act (1940) |
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This act authorized the U.S. government to raise a national army through compulsory enlistment via a draft. While the act prohibited discrimination based on race, the military was still segregated at the time of World War II, and Black soldiers were mostly relegated to labor roles.
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| Seminole Agreement (1900) |
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This congressional act ratified an agreement with the Seminole Nation concerning allotment, like enrollment and laws of descent. The second proviso established matrilineal descent of lands, money, and property for heirs.
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| Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida (1996) |
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In the Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida, the Supreme Court considered whether the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act violated the state of Florida's state sovereignty as guaranteed by the Eleventh Amendment.
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| Separate schools for white and colored (1904) |
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Acts passed by the Virginia General Assembly reflected race-neutral language of the legal code after the Civil War. Application of these statutes resulted in entrenched Jim Crow segregation.
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| Shelby County v. Holder (2013) |
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This landmark Supreme Court decision overturned the federal pre-clearance section the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which required jurisdictions to seek approval from the Department of Justice or the U.S. District Court for D.C., before making changes to their voting laws. This decision limited the federal government's ability to protect voting rights for all citizens and has since allowed policies such as voter ID laws and the closing polling locations to limit voting rights for certain groups.
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| Slaves and Free Negroes (1849) |
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This act passed by the Virginia General Assembly reflects the racialization of the antebellum legal code.
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| Smith v. Directors of Independent School Dist. of Keokuk (1875) |
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In this case, the Iowa Supreme Court affirmed a lower court's ruling that the Keokuk school district could not refuse to admit a Black student based on race. Legal precedent for this case as set in the 1868 ruling in Clark v. Board of School Directors.
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| Somerset v. Stewart (1772) |
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This case heard before the English Court of King's Bench determined that slavery was unsupported by English Common Law and that no enslaved person could be forced out of England to be sold into slavery. James Sommerset was an enslaved person who had been purchased by Charles Stewart in Boston, Massachusetts, then taken to England. Sommerset later escaped, and Stewart had him captured and imprisoned on a ship headed to Jamaica. Sommerset's godparents applied for a writ of habeas corpus. Following the court’s decision, enslaved people in the American Colonies filed freedom suits based on Mansfield's ruling.
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| Stamp Act (1765) |
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The Stamp Act placed a tax on various printed material like legal documents, playing cards, and newspapers. The act specifies skins and pieces of parchment serving various legal roles and the differing amounts of tax each document needed. The tax’s payment was confirmed by the placement of a stamp indicating a specific amount on the good. It was the first of a series of taxes placed on the North American colonies without their consent, sparking protest and resistance.
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| State of Iowa v. Katz (1949) |
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In this case, the Iowa Supreme Court upheld a lower court's jury verdict that Katz Drug Store violated the civil rights of three Black patrons when workers refused to serve them at the store's soda fountain.
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| State of Missouri v. Celia (1855) |
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In this case, eighteen-year-old Celia was convicted of murdering her enslaver. The case considered whether Celia was guilty of murder or if she could be acquitted due to self-defense from sexual assault. The court ruled that Celia's enslaved status prevented her from being eligible to protect herself, and she was sentenced to death.
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| State of Nebraska, ex rel. Daniel Freeman, v. John Scheve et al. (1902) |
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In this case, Daniel Freeman, recognized as the first homesteader under the 1862 Homestead Act, made a public grievance over the use of the Bible in a public school near Beatrice. When the teacher refused to cease using the Bible, offering prayers, and singing hymns in her classroom, Freeman took his case to the school board, who defended the teacher. He then took his case to the courts. The lower court also sided with the teacher, and he appealed the case to the Nebraska Supreme Court. The higher court found that the actions of the teacher and the school board violated the provisions in Nebraska's constitution regarding the separation of church and state. The U.S. Supreme Court did not make a similar ruling until 1962 in Engel v. Vitale.
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