Browder v. Gayle
Related Civil Rights Cases
Throughout the history of the Civil Rights Movement there have been groundbreaking Supreme Court rulings on civil rights cases, including Browder v. Gayle, that ultimately shattered de jure segregation in the United States. A significant number of these cases involved the issue of segregated transportation, voting rights, and housing. Such cases provided a blueprint for the achievement of later civil rights victories. Listed below are a few of those cases that relate to Browder v. Gayle.
Astrik (*) denotes cases available at the Montgomery County Archives
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Plessy v. Furguson
1896
In 1890 the state of Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act. The act required that blacks and whites have separate accommodations on railroad cars. A diverse group of New Orleans citizens formed the Comité des Citoyens (Committee of Citizens) to contest the law. They persuaded a mixed race man by the name of Homer Plessy to test the law. He boarded an East Louisiana railroad car designated for Whites and was arrested. Plessy argued that the state law violated rights given to him by the Fourteenth amendment of the United States Constitution. However, the Supreme Court ruled 7-1 in favor of the law, stating that it did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment and contended that the law separated the races as a matter of public policy. The lone dissenter in the case, John Marshall Harlan, disagreed with the ruling and predicted that the decision would become as infamous as the Dred Scott Decision of 1857.(11)
Montgomery County Voting Rights Cases Ola M. Galloway v Montgomery County board of Registrars*
1943-1944
Arthur Madison,1918 graduate of the Columbia University school of law and son of Eli Madison, founder of Montgomery's Madison Park community, returned to Montgomery in 1943 for an extended visit. While in town Madison established what he called "citizenship classes" to prepare and encourage black Montgomerians to vote. In 1944, Madison, who served as legal counsel for the NAACP, filled a lawsuit, Ola M. Galloway v. Montgomery County Board of Registrars, after Galloway, a school teacher, and several others including local NAACP leader E.D Nixon, were denied the right to vote while meeting all the prerequisites needed to vote. The case came on the heels of the Supreme Court's ruling of Smith v. Allwright, which had outlawed whites-only primary elections. Galloway v. Montgomery County Board of Registrars would dissolve when six of the school teachers, whose jobs were threatened, stated that they had not authorized Madison to file a suit on their behalf, a tactic also used in an attempt to derail the Browder v. Gayle case. As a result, Madison was arrested, fined $500, and disbarred in the state. Madison's work would not be in vain, as by 1955 there were 1,678 black voters in Montgomery. These voters used their newfound political power to elect police commissioner Dave Birmingham in 1953, who hired some of the first black police officers in Montgomery. Madison returned to his home in Harlem, New York, where he practiced law until his death in 1957. (12)(22)
Ola M. Galloway v. Montgomery County board of Registrars (1944) Montgomery County Archives.
E.D Nixon v Montgomery County Board of Registrars (1944) Montgomery County Archives.
Morgan v. Virginia
1946
In 1944, twenty-seven year old Irene Morgan was arrested in Middlesex County, Virginia for violating that state's segregation law. She was traveling to Baltimore and refused to sit in the segregated section of a Greyhound bus. With the help of William H. Hastie, the former governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands and later a judge on the U.S. court of appeals for the Third Circuit, and Thurgood Marshall, legal counsel of the NAACP, her case, Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia, was taken to the United States Supreme Court. Instead of arguing that the law violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, Morgan's lawyers instead claimed that the law violated the Interstate Commerce Clause of the U.S Constitution. In 1946 in a landmark decision, the Court ruled that the Virginia law was unconstitutional, as the Commerce clause protected interstate traffic.(13)
Shelley v. Kraemer
1948
In 1945 The Shelleys, an African American family, purchased a home in St. Louis, Missouri. The Shelleys were unaware that in 1911 a restrictive covenant had been placed on the property. The covenant aimed to prevent "people of the Negro or Mongolian race" from occupying the property. A neighbor by the name of Louis Kraemer sued to prevent the Shelleys from moving in. The Missouri Supreme Court ruled that the covenant was enforceable against the purchasers because it was a private agreement between the original parties. The Supreme Court ruled that while the covenants were not invalid under the 14th Amendment and private parties could abide by these covenants, the covenants could not be enforced by the state as that would violate the 14th Amendment of the U.S Constitution. (14)
Baton Rouge Bus Boycott
1953
On June 20, 1953, the black citizens of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, led by Willis Reed and Rev. T.J. Jemison, began an eight day boycott of the city buses. The boycott was done to protest the segregated seating aboard the buses. After eight days, on June 28th, the Baton Rouge city council agreed to open the seating of the bus and allow blacks to sit wherever they wanted, except for the two front seats which would remain segregated. (15)
Gray v. Alabama*
1956
In February of 1956 one of the defendants in the Browder v. Gayle case, Jeaneatta Reese, chose to withdraw from the case due to intimidation from the white community. After her withdrawal, Fred Gray was indicted for "unlawfully appearing as the attorney and unlawfully filing a complaint in the name of Jeaneatta Reese... all without the authority of said Jeaneatta Reese." The case was obliviously a ploy to derail the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Browder v. Gayle case. (16)
Fred Gray v. Alabama (1956)
Montgomery County Archives.
King v. Alabama
1956
On February 21, 1956, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was indicted by the Montgomery County grand jury for his boycott of the Montgomery City Lines, Inc. According to the State of Alabama, King and eighty-nine others violated a 1921 statute that outlawed boycotts against businesses. Judge Eugene W. Carter found King guilty and fined him $500 plus an additional $500 for court costs. Rather than pay the fine, King chose to appeal the verdict, and the sentence was converted to 386 days of jail time. The Court of Appeals rejected King’s appeal on April 30, 1957, maintaining that his lawyers missed the sixty day deadline. King paid the fine in December 1957. (17)
Tallahassee Bus Boycott
1956
On May 26,1956, two female students from Florida A&M University, Wilhelmina Jakes and Carrie Patterson, boarded a Tallahassee city bus and sat in the whites-only seats. When ordered to move by the driver they refused and were arrested. Days later, students at FAMU organized a campus-wide boycott of city buses, which eventually spread throughout the black community of Tallahassee. Local clergyman C.K. Steele organized the Inter-Civil Council (ICC) to help arrange the logistics of the boycott. The ICC organized a car-pool system similar to the one in Montgomery and the boycott was an instant success. On July first, the transit company that ran the local bus line suspended service due to the financial impact the boycott had caused. They also agreed to hire black drivers for black neighborhoods in Tallahassee. Despite these concessions from the transit company, the boycott continued. After the Supreme Court decision affirmed that bus segregation was illegal, members of the ICC organized tests of the ruling by boarding city buses and sitting in the whites only section. These tests occurred with no incident. Plans of a large scale test were cancelled though after threats from white citizens. On January 7, 1957, Tallahassee officials repealed the segregated seating ordinance because of the Supreme Court ruling in Browder v. Gayle. However, the city did not fully integrate Tallahassee's buses, attempting to prevent complete integration by implementing an assigned seating scheme. By the summer of 1957, buses in Tallahassee were fully integrated. (18)
Britt & Livingston v. Alabama*
1957
In February 1957 Raymond Britt Jr. and Kyle Livingston were charged with "willfully setting off dynamite near or under the Hutchinson Street Baptist Church". The two, known members of the Ku Klux Klan, were also indicted for their participation in the bombing of three other churches as well as the homes of Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy and Rev. Robert S. Graetz. Britt and Livingston also attempted to bomb the home of Martin Luther King, Jr., but the bomb was found and disarmed before its denotation. A month earlier, Willie Edwards was abducted by Klansmen, including Britt and Livingston, and forced to jump 40 feet off the Tyler-Goodwyn Bridge into the Alabama River. In 1976 Britt confessed to the murder, but charges were dropped by Judge Frank Embry because the cause of death was never established. Embry concluded that "merely forcing a person to jump from a bridge does not naturally and probably lead to the death of such person". (19) (20)(21)
