African American Citizenship, the 1883 Civil Rights Cases and the Creation of the Jim Crow South

Brown v. Board of Education and Plessy v. Ferguson dominate discussion of the impact of the Supreme Court on matters of southern race relations, and understandably so given the significance of Brown in overturning Plessy . As a result, historians have focused heavily on the Plessy case as a way of understanding the emergence of Jim Crow segregation. Yet this is to study the late nineteenth century from the perspective of the mid‐twentieth century, and overlook other Supreme Court decisions of the late nineteenth century, most notably the decision in the 1883 Civil Rights Cases . This article will explore the implications of the 1883 decision: how it reignited an existing national debate over the meaning of civil rights that was influenced by local concerns. Through a study of how African Americans in Alabama responded to the court's 1883 decision, this article will demonstrate that black political activism remained strong well into the 1880s. Race and citizenship were brought into sharp focus by this decision, which had longer‐term implications over the very meaning of civil rights in America.