Rehnquist's Legacy of American Apartheid
Ezekiel J. Krahlin
Source: Closed Chambers, Edward Lazarus
San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 17, 2000
Chief Justice William Rehnquist
By now everyone is familiar with the Supreme Court's 5 to 4 ruling.
This historic decision was decided under provisions outlined in the
United States Constitution's 14th amendment. The 14th amendment was
enacted to provide protection to African-American voters whose rights
were being violated after the Civil War. After the election of 1876,
the rights of minority voters began to erode, until by the end of the
century, a whole segment of the populace had been effectively
disenfranchised. In the early part of the 20th century, the expansion
of habeas corpus rulings began to chip away at the Jim Crow system. By
the time the Moore vs. Dempsey case reached the Supreme Court in 1923,
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrot, for the majority, that the federal
courts could not ignore cases of gross injustice.
The expansion of habeas corpus was a small part of the attack on the
South's apartheid system while throughout the county, the Jim Crow
system was also under fire. The legal team of the NAACP, led by
Thurgood Marshall, felt the courts were the best strategy to end legal
segregation in the South. This was the climate of the country when
William Rehnquist first appeared on the court. Rehnquist was opposed
to any expansion of the court's role and often wrote Supreme Court
Justice Jackson to advise him against any expansion of the courts role
in what he considered to be the rights of the states. "We should trust
the state court's to enforce due process," Rehnquist explained.
What is disturbing about Rehnquist's philosophy is that he felt that
the growing concerns for racial justice were outside the court's
jurisdiction. The 14th amendment clearly gave the federal court the
right to protect citizens that had been denied their rights, which is
why the Civil War was fought in the first place. However, Rehnquist
did not see things quite that way and continued to oppose the voting
rights of black citizens.
In the case Terry vs. Adams, which was a challenge to the exclusions
of blacks in Texas elections, Rehnquist stated, "It is about time the
Court faced the fact that white people in the South don't like colored
people." When it came time for Rehnquist to advise Jackson about what
to do in Brown vs. Board of Education, Rehnquist concluded that Plessy
v Ferguson was right and should be reaffirmed. I think it can be
safely said that the future chief justice, when it came to black
people, did not favor an end to the segregated system of the South.
Instead, under the disguise of states rights, Rehnquist continued his
attack on minority rights. In 1962, another ugly episode appeared that
casts further light on Rehnquist's view of the law.
At the time, Rehnquist was part of a group of Republican lawyers who
roamed through minority precincts in Phoenix challenging the voting
qualifications of blacks and Latinos. Rehnquist, for one, singled out
minority voters and verbally humiliated them. At a 1971 hearing on his
nomination, he denied taking part in "challenging the qualifications
of any voters." However, a San Francisco lawyer named James Brosmahan
tells a far different story.
Brosmahan testified in a 1986 hearing that when he went along with a
local FBI agent to a heavily Democratic precinct, he found a small
group of Republicans, including Rehnquist, harassing black and Latino
voters. Other witnesses saw Rehnquist challenging other minority
voters. One of them was Sidney Smith, a former Arizona State
professor, who heard Rehnquist tell two black men who Rehnquist felt
couldn't read, "You have no business being in this line trying to
vote. You should leave here." This is the forgotten history of Chief
Justice Rehnquist. History is important, because if you do not know
anything about history, someone can, and will, tell you anything. For
instance, they could say that William Rehnquist believes in states
rights and equal protection under the law, but history tells us all
that he does not.
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