Legal Cases II: Reading Questions

Booker T. Washington

1. What is the title of Washington’s autobiography (119)?

2. What is the date and occasion of his speech (120)?

3. According to Washington, how should blacks take advantage of their “opportunities” (122)?

4. Why are blacks preferable to “those of foreign birth” as a source of labor (122)?

5. What metaphor does Washington use to describe the ideal relation between the races (122)?

6. What is Washington’s position on “social equality” (124)?

W. E. B. Du Bois

1. Where was Du Bois born? What is the title of his most famous book (141)?

2. What is Du Bois’s answer to: “How does it feel to be a problem?” (142)?

3. What creates the “veil” that separates Du Bois from the white world (142)?

4. What is double consciousness (143)?

5. What sort of opportunity does Du Bois seek (144)?

6. Has the freedman found freedom (145)?

7. What sort of strivings does Du Bois describe (149)?

Plessy v. Ferguson (29-60)

1. Why was the decision in Plessy so important?

2. Why does the Plessy majority reject the Thirteenth Amendment appeal (42-3)?

3. How does the Plessy majority distinguish between social and political equality? Why does it refer to "the nature of things" (44)?

4. According to the Plessy majority, the appeal to the Fourteenth Amendment reduces itself to one question. What is that question? How does the Plessy majority define reasonable (50)?

5. What, according to the Plessy majority, is the "underlying fallacy" of Plessy's argument (50-1)?

6. What, according to the Plessy majority, is "legislation powerless to eradicate" (51)?

7. What, according to Justice Harlan, is the intention of the "statute in question" (55)?

8. What does Justice Harlan mean when he says that "Our Constitution is color-blind” (57)?

9. What is the point of Justice Harlan's contrast between the "Chinese race" and "citizens of the black race" (58)?

10. Why does Justice Harlan call segregation a "badge of servitude" (59)?

11. Why does Justice Harlan dismiss the guarantee of "equal accommodations" as a "thin disguise" (59)?

Discussion Questions

See the Plessy book (190-2).

1. Consider questions 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 19 in the Plessy book.

2. What role should the law and government play in rectifying prejudiced attitudes toward race?

3. What is the relation between Du Bois’s description of double-consciousness and the logic of the Plessy majority?