美國民權運動之濫觴--Mitchell v. U.S. 313 U.S. 80 (1941).

中文版待續
Breaching Jim Crow in 1941, as the beginning of the Civil Rights movement, Mitchell v. U.S. 313 U.S. 80 (1941) provided an important precedent, requiring equal treatment, for following litigations against discrimination.
Case Summary:
Facts. On April 20, 1937, Congressman Arthur W. Mitchell, the highest ranking black public official, the sole black member of U.S. House of Representatives, boarded a Pullman car in Chicago with a first class ticket to Hot Spring, Arkansas. After train left Memphis, the conductor warned him that he could not stay in the first class section. And then, he was placed in a second-class Jim Crow car.
He filed a complaint with the ICC, asserting that he had experienced “undue or reasonable prejudice or disadvantage”, contrary to federal law. However, the response of the ICC was that under the Interstate Commerce Act “the discrimination and prejudice was plainly not unjust or undue” because low demand from black travelers for luxury facilities justified the railroad practice of segregation withholding them from all blacks.
Holdings. On April 28, 1941, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Mitchell’s favor. According to the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 (ICA), the non-discrimination clause prohibits interstate railways from subjecting anyone to undue or unreasonable prejudice or discriminate whatsoever. Therefore, the Court invalidated railroad practices of denying black passengers equal luxury facilities. Chief Justice Hughes delivered the Court’s opinion, following the McCabe (1914) and Gaines (1938), for Mitchell that denial of equality of accommodations due to his race would invade his fundamental individual right guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment and the ICA, and the comparative volume of traffic could not justified the unequal treatment. Mitchell had brought a first-class ticket and segregated facilities must be truly equal, therefore, the railroad practice violated the Act’s requirements.
However, the opinion did not address “segregation” directly and left the issue unsolved for the majority of the Black American passengers who seated in second-class compartments.

Background Discussion:
From society background, attitudes about race, especially to slavery, which British colonists brought into America, shaped deeply the conceptions the White American had and the conditions the African American would live. More seriously, although there were major federal regulations supposing to grant the equal protection to African Americans, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and 1875, the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, in Dred Scott (1857), the Civil Rights cases (1883), and Plessy (1896), the Supreme Court confirmed “the badge of inferiority” upon African Americans, which the state and local governments had placed for a while. In the 1930s, Jim Crow laws became effective on buses and in bus depots in southern states.
But, long term forces had been making racial changes on the way to modern civil rights society, although slowly. Such as urbanization, industrialization, the great migration of the African American from South to North, and advances in their education, and increasing access to the elective franchise, all enhanced the African American’s ability to claim their rights. Moreover, World War II also accelerated these movements in many aspects. The series changes lead to a modern civil rights movement.

About the political climate at that time, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had been selected in 1936 with unprecedented support from the African American for a Democrat. New Deal did not challenge segregation directly, but its benefits to the African American came in the form of economic assistance, which still encouraged and brought them a measure of economic and political inclusion.
The Mitchell case was occasion for those interesting legal jockeying surrounding the applicability of state segregation laws to interstate passengers, because the Roosevelt Administration was intervening on behalf of Mitchell against I.C.C.
Also, the ideology of World War II was anti-fascist and pro-democracy, which affected American racial attitudes in variety ways. As a journal, the Pittsburgh Courier, during the wartime, pointed it out that “our war is not against Hitler in Europe, but against the Hitler in America.”

Regarding judicial factors, New Deal also change the principles the Supreme Court had in former Lochner era. During the 1930s, in the face of Roosevelt’s celebrated “Court-packing” plan and the New deal’s influence, and after Roosevelt appointed new Justices to replace four former conservative ones, the Supreme Court had gone through a serious change, which was called “Judicial revolution”. The Supreme Court shifted from the Court that “thwarted programs for economic recovery” to the Court that “started to carve out a role for itself as defender of individual liberties and civil rights.”

Conclusion:
Influence. It was in cases involving segregated travel that African American litigants won their first sustained victories against Jim Crow. However, Mitchell was not the first case the Supreme Court has dealt with. Twenty-seven earlier, Justice Hughes had presented his idea that the Court would require equal treatment for the African American on railroad, and he, becoming the Chief Justice, just fulfilled his promise here. But, it must note that Mitchell avoided “equal protection” arguments based on the Fourteenth Amendment, instead depending upon federal powers that had been established on interstate commerce dealing with travel issues.
Because Mitchell only applied to interstate passengers, southern railroad still continued to exclude blacks traveling within a single state from first-class facilities. Although the Court was not ready yet to invalidate segregation founded by Plessy, the Justices could not still overlook blatant racial inequality.
From the past to the future. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), Justice John M. Harlan has claimed in his eloquent and prophetic dissent that “But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind.” Justice Harlan was wrong and very right. Why he was wrong is because the Constitution of U.S. has its very beginning’s words, “We the people of the United States…”, and the “people” was referring to those “white people”, when our founding Fathers drafted this constitutional law. But why he was absolutely right is because he could foresee, and really brought the dawn of, modern civil rights society. Our Constitution, a living Constitution, has its own vivid life.
As Mitchell testified, he was thinking it might be different if he would have told the conductor who he was, but the result revealed that “it didn’t make a damn bit difference.” Further, he thought “I was in Arkansas…they don’t keep them (the African American) in jail for trial down there, but they take them out and lynch them after they put them in jail, ” therefore, he decided, as the only African American in Congress, he had better not be lynched on this train. At least, about the “equality”, the African American really accepted equal treatments from the White, no matter a Congressman or the populace. However, miserable destinies the African American have suffered and the sorry history we all have both cannot be prescribed in simple words.
Until Brown v. Board of Education (1954) in the Warren Court, “the seeds of race hate planted by the Plessy Court yielded a bitter harvest of divisiveness, racial degradation, and judicial disrespect for the constitutional guarantee of equal treatment under the law.” Also, as in Plessy Justice Harlan presented in his dissent that “the destinies of the two races, in this country, are indissolubly linked together, and the interests of both require that the common government of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate to be planted under the sanction of law”, we the people, in our diverse society, have the same interests and obligations, in respecting each other, to make our country much greater under our constitutional law, representing our belief, not only a dream.