These rights were often denied to second-class citizens and people that were not even considered to be a person, such as slaves. Throughout American history the rights ensured by the first ten amendments were denied to certain people sometime or another.
It is not uncommon for a case to cite more amendments than one such as, the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, and the Fifth Amendment, as a basis for defense. The First Amendment right to freedom of speech is the most challenged amendment. The system inequality is from the extent of free speech and people's use of it to speak out against the government. People who use their voices against the system are often caused a great deal of legal troubles while those that use their voices to support the system are free to do so at will. .
Certain laws were designed to replace the social controls that had been removed by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The grandfather Clause was established to make sure that white supremacy continued by allowing white people who had enjoyed the right to vote prior to 1866 or 1867, or their lineal descendants to vote regardless of their of the educational, property, or tax requirements. The Jim Crow laws forced racial segregation in the U.S. South between the end of 1877 and the beginning of a civil-rights movement. .
Jim Crow Laws included the statute set by Plessy v. Ferguson, in 1896, of "separate, but equal" (USSC, "Plessy"). In the Southern states of the United States legal segregation in public facilities was current from the late 19th century into the 1950s. Legal segregation in America established the fact that there was inequality in the system. In the 50s and 60s, Southern black people formed the Civil Rights Movement. Plessy v. Ferguson was overturned in the 1955 ruling of Brown v. Board of Education. This did not put an end to legal segregation, but it laid a foundation for the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
