LAW7 802 - Civil Rights History from Plessy to Brown

This course explores the various meanings of civil rights in the fifty years that preceded Brown v. Board of Education. Examining civil rights cases from Plessy v. Ferguson through World War II and beyond, the emphasis of the course is on recreating the uncertainties that characterized civil rights doctrine in the 1940s. It will explore how both the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Section and the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Education Fund approached the issues of labor and class that had dominated conceptions of civil rights prior to the 1940s, and whether and how they incorporated those conceptions into their own.

Prerequisites & Notes
Prerequisite: Constitutional Law.

Credits: 3