Jim Crow Laws

Immediately following the Civil War, states began enacting "Jim Crow" laws that were designed to enforce and maintain racial segregation in a post-slavery society. For a full century between the end of the Civil War and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, Jim Crow laws mandated separate public facilities for Black and white people, including bathrooms, schools, transportation, and housing. While these laws were most common in the Southern United States, Northern states carried out similar discrimination through other means. While no Jim Crow laws were enacted in Michigan, a combination of unfair housing practices, violence, and intimidation by police, officials, and white residents functioned to enforce racial segregation in Detroit.

The Jim Crow period officially ended only five years before Bradley v. Milliken was initially heard in Michigan courts, but the case underscored persisting consequences of discrimination that was in some cases legally sanctioned, and in others, willfully overlooked.

14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

The abolition of slavery raised issues of citizenship rights and equal protection under the law for a class of formerly enslaved persons previously unaccounted for in the Constitution. One of three "Reconstruction amendments" added to the Constitution in the Reconstruction period following the Civil War, Amendment XIV addressed those issues most notably in its Equal Protection Clause:

People ex rel. Workman v. Board of Education, 18 Mich. 400

Nearly 30 years before the United States Supreme Court case weighed in on racial segregation in public facilities in Plessy v. Ferguson, the Michigan Supreme Court issued a decision on public schools. In 1867, Michigan passed a law that permitted any resident of a district to have the right to attend school in said district. When Joseph Workman's child was refused admission to a school in the Detroit ward in which Workman lived and paid taxes on the basis of his child's African ancestry, a group of civil rights activists including the Second Baptist Church and later Governor of Michigan John J. Bagley brought the case on Workman's behalf. The Board of Education argued that there was public interest in refusing admission to the student to keep the peace, as the intermingling of white and Black students could cause trouble. The Michigan Supreme Court did not view this argument as persuasive, and by viewing the intent of the 1867 law rather plainly, held that racial segregation in Detroit public schools was prohibited. The ruling effectively made de jure segregation illegal in Michigan, a definition that would later be clarified in Milliken v. Bradley and distinguished from de facto segregation.

Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537

In 1892, Homer Plessy boarded a train car in New Orleans, Louisiana that was for whites only. Louisiana's Separate Car Act of 1890 required railroads operating in the state to have "equal but separate accommodations" for white and Black patrons, and made it illegal for a white or Black patron to board a car that did not match their race. Plessy was charged under the law, but argued that the law violated the 14th Amendment. The landmark case made it to the Supreme Court, where in a 7-1 decision the Court established the "separate but equal" doctrine, holding that racially segregated public facilities were constitutional as long as they were purportedly "equal" in quality. 

The doctrine provided legal support to enforce Jim Crow laws that maintained racial segregation in public domains including public schools, particularly in the Southern United States.

Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60

A Louisville, Kentucky ordinance prohibited the sale of real property to a Black individual if the majority of residents in the area were white, and prohibited the same for a white individual if the majority of residents were Black. This ordinance was challenged and held unconstitutional for violating the 14th Amendment's Due Process Clause. However, racially restrictive covenant clauses became common since the ruling only applied to legal statutes and did not cover private agreements such as property deeds.

People of Michigan v. Ossian Sweet, et al.

Dr. Ossian Sweet moved to Detroit with his family in 1924 to practice medicine. Because of the high number of economic and racially restrictive covenants in Detroit, Dr. Sweet struggled to find suitable housing for his family. In 1925, he purchased a home in an all-white neighborhood on Garland Avenue on the east side of Detroit.

The night the Sweets moved into the home, a crowd of over 100 people came to protest and intimidate. Although rocks were thrown at the house, no other violence occurred. The next day, the Sweets were made aware that night would not be as restrained as the last. At nightfall, the crowd gathered again, though much larger in size. Rocks were thrown and racial slurs were yelled. Tensions escalated through the night, particularly after one rock broke a window of the home, causing the Sweets to feel scared and trapped inside. The Sweets decided to act by firing shots outside towards the crowd: one bullet struck and killed Leon Breiner, while another injured Eric Houghberg.

All eleven inside the Sweets’ home were charged with first-degree murder in the Recorder’s Court of the City of Detroit. Gladys was later released on bail, while all the men were held in jail until the trial. Clarence Darrow, a world class attorney, served as defense counsel. The prosecution team argued that the crowd gathered outside was peaceful and the Sweets were the aggressors, playing on the racial biases of the jurors. The defense had the incredibly difficult task of convincing jurors to set aside any racial bias and instead, to connect with the humanity of the defendants. After days of deliberation, Judge Frank Murphy dismissed the case, as he believed no verdict would be reached. He declared mistrial and released all defendants on bail.

People of Michigan v. Henry Sweet

After the mistrial in People v. Ossian Sweet, the prosecution chose to move forward with a retrial. Instead of targeting all eleven, the prosecution chose to only retry Henry Sweet, who had admitted to firing shots from inside the home. The jury selection process was difficult, going through over 200 people before settling on the final 12. During this trial, Darrow was much more aggressive in his defense strategy. Judge Murphy told the jury to consider the attitudes of those gathered outside the Sweet house, and if that was enough to put a reasonable man in fear of danger. After a few hours of jury deliberations, they found Henry Sweet not guilty.

The Sweet home at 2905 Garland in Detroit, pictured in 1958.

Detroit News Photograph Collection, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University

Sipes v. McGhee, 316 Mich. 614, 25 N.W.2d 638 and Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1

Despite a racially restrictive covenant in the property deed stating "This property shall not be used or occupied by any person or persons except those of the Caucasian race," Orsel and Minnie McGhee purchased a home in Detroit in December 1944. By January 1945, their neighbor Benjamin Sipes and other members of the Northwest Civic Association threatened to sue the McGhees if they did not honor the covenant by vacating their new home. The couple refused and Sipes filed a complaint with the Wayne County Circuit Court, which sided with Sipes and ordered the McGhees to vacate. They appealed to the Michigan Supreme Court, and when that court also ordered them to vacate, they appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court with defense funding support from the NAACP and legal representation by Thurgood Marshall. 

At the same time, discriminatory housing covenants in St. Louis were being challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court in Shelley v. Kraemer. Bringing identical issues to the court at the same time, the two cases were consolidated to be heard and decided as one. The case explored whether the terms of private agreements could be enforced by the judiciary. The court ruled that private parties may agree to abide by a racially restrictive covenant, but for the State to enforce them as lower courts had done in earlier rulings was in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. In other words, the ruling did not outlaw racially restrictive covenants, but it precluded similar cases from being brought to court because the court had now set precedent that the State could not enforce the terms agreed upon between private individuals.

Although Sipes is captioned in the full case title, the cases are best known together as simply Shelley v. Kramer.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483

In 1951, Oliver Brown's child was denied enrollment in the Topeka, Kansas public school closest to her family's home, much like what spurred the 1869 Workman case in Michigan. Brown's daughter was instead forced to bus to a Black-only school further from her home. Thirteen Black families including the Browns filed a lawsuit against the Topeka Board of Education, arguing the segregation policy was unconstitutional. Citing the precedent of "separate but equal" set by Plessy, the Kansas court ruled against the Browns. Represented by Thurgood Marshall, they appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" and school segregation sanctioned by law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The decision unanimously overturned Plessy v. Ferguson only as it pertained to segregation in public education; "separate but equal" continued to justify segregation in other public facilities. While the ruling effectively mandated desegregation of public schools, it was met with resistance and without haste in many states.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 349 U.S. 294

Known as "Brown II," this Supreme Court case was heard to address implementation of the earlier desegregation ruling. Many states, especially in the South, took advantage of the original ruling's lack of specific instructions or timeline for how and when school desegregation should be achieved, simply delaying or resisting integration altogether. This second ruling modified the first, ordering desegregation to occur "with all deliberate speed." Critics argued this phrasing was too ambiguous to encourage reasonable and timely progress toward integration by schools. American schools were not widely desegregated until the late 1960s.

Fair Housing Act

Titles VII and IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 are known as the Fair Housing Act, which made discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, color, religion, or national origin illegal. Later amendments expanded this to include sex, disability, and familial status. Where previous rulings failed to close loopholes that allowed racial segregation to persist through private agreements, this legislation made it illegal to enforce or include discriminatory clauses in housing agreements and for banks to engage in discriminatory lending practices.