1880

1886

In Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886), the Supreme Court strikes down a San Francisco ordinance regulating laundries that was routinely enforced only against Chinese immigrants.

From 1884 through 1900, the Supreme Court issues a series of decisions known as the Chinese Exclusion Cases, which uphold congressional power to order Chinese laborers expelled from the United States.

November
Grover Cleveland is elected President. He is the first Democrat to win the White House since James Buchanan in 1856.

1883

In Pace v. Alabama, 106 U.S. 583 (1883), the Supreme Court upholds an Alabama statute that punishes fornication and adultery more heavily when the parties are of different races. The Court reasons that the statute does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because the penalty applies equally to whites and blacks who engage in interracial adultery or sex.

1880

In Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303 (1880), the Supreme Court holds that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits states from excluding blacks from juries.

Timeline Year

1502	1600	1700	1800	1820	1840	1850	1860	1870	1880	1890
1900	1910	1920	1930	1940	1950	1960	1970	1980	1990	2000

1880

In Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303 (1880), the Supreme Court holds that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits states from excluding blacks from juries.

1883

In United States v. Harris, 106 U.S. 629 (1883), the Court holds unconstitutional portions of the the Ku Klux Klan Act ( the Civil Rights Act of 1871). The Court holds that Congress cannot reach purely private conspiracies to violate civil rights under its powers to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment. Later that year, in The Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883), the Court strikes down the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which prohibits discrimination in places of public accommodation, on the ground that the Fourteenth Amendment reaches only state action and that Congress has no power to regulate private discrimination. Justice Bradley’s majority opinion states that blacks had been freed from slavery, and that it was time that they “cease[] to be the special favorite of the laws.”

In King v. Gallagher, 93 N.Y. 438 (1883), The Court of Appeals of New York upholds segregated schools where black schools have equal facilities.

1884

November
Grover Cleveland is elected President. He is the first Democrat to win the White House since James Buchanan in 1856.

1886

In Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886), the Supreme Court strikes down a San Francisco ordinance regulating laundries that was routinely enforced only against Chinese immigrants.

1887

Florida becomes the first state to enact a statute requiring segregation in places of public accommodation. Eight other states follow Florida’s lead by 1892. The practices of comprehensive racial segregation known as “Jim Crow” emerge in the final fifteen years of the nineteenth century, and racial separation becomes entrenched. Blacks largely disappear from juries in the South. Southern states begin adopting legal measures that interfere with blacks’ right to vote, including literacy tests and poll taxes, which effectively charge a fee for the right to vote. Around the turn of the century, Southern state legislatures enact increasingly restrictive labor control measures designed to coerce black agricultural workers into situations little better than slavery. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, many states pass statutes requiring segregation in railroad transportation.