Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime.
- Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution500 related topics
Civil Rights Act of 1875
United States federal law enacted during the Reconstruction era in response to civil rights violations against African Americans.
The Court also held that the Thirteenth Amendment was meant to eliminate "the badge of slavery," but not to prohibit racial discrimination in public accommodations.
Racial segregation
Systematic separation of people into racial or other ethnic groups in daily life.
After the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in America, racial discrimination became regulated by the so-called Jim Crow laws, which mandated strict segregation of the races.
American Civil War
Civil war in the United States between the Union (states that remained loyal to the federal union, or "the North") and the Confederacy (states that voted to secede, or "the South").
Slaves in the border states and those located in some former Confederate territory occupied before the Emancipation Proclamation were freed by state action or (on December 6, 1865) by the Thirteenth Amendment.
James Nesmith
American politician and lawyer from Oregon.
While in the Senate, he and Reverdy Johnson were the only Democrats in that chamber to vote for the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution to abolish slavery.
Enforcement Acts
The Enforcement Acts were three bills that were passed by the United States Congress between 1870 and 1871.
In Hodges v. United States (1906) the Court addressed a possible Thirteenth Amendment rationale for the Enforcement Acts, and found that the federal government did not have the authority to punish a group of men for interfering with Black workers through whitecapping.
Civil Rights Cases
The Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883), were a group of five landmark cases in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments did not empower Congress to outlaw racial discrimination by private individuals.
Forty acres and a mule
Part of Special Field Orders No. 15, a wartime order proclaimed by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman on January 16, 1865, during the American Civil War, to allot land to some freed families, in plots of land no larger than 40 acre.
On January 31, 1865, the House of Representatives approved the 13th Amendment, which outlaws slavery and involuntary servitude except in the case of punishment.
Congressional power of enforcement
Included in a number of amendments to the United States Constitution.
The language "The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation" is used, with slight variations, in Amendments XIII, XIV, XV, XIX, XXIII, XXIV, and XXVI.
Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co.
Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U.S. 409 (1968), is a landmark United States Supreme Court case, which held that Congress could regulate the sale of private property to prevent racial discrimination: " bars all racial discrimination, private as well as public, in the sale or rental of property, and that the statute, thus construed, is a valid exercise of the power of Congress to enforce the Thirteenth Amendment."
Selective Draft Law Cases
United States Supreme Court decision which upheld the Selective Service Act of 1917, and more generally, upheld conscription in the United States.
The Supreme Court upheld that conscription did not violate the Thirteenth Amendment's prohibition of involuntary servitude, or the First Amendment's protection of freedom of conscience.