Early Twentieth-Century Racial Discrimination Cases in State Supreme Courts

An aspect of civil rights litigation receiving scant scholarly attention is the response of state supreme courts to racial discrimination claims in the early twentieth century. While scholarship on general social context suggests claims would find more support in non-southern courts and in the later years of the period, this has not been systematically investigated. Furthermore, while the literature on the U.S. Supreme Court establishes variance patterns by discrimination type, they cannot necessarily be extrapolated to state outcomes. I show that since the predictive utility of frameworks "borrowed" from other studies is dubious in this context, these state cases demand their own unique investigation and understanding. The assessment of two key clusters of cases offered here suggests distinct patterns in southern jury discrimination and northern public accommodations decisions. In the former, claims were routinely denied, with U.S. Supreme Court precedent occasionally used to overturn a conviction. In the latter, plaintiffs relying on state civil rights statutes were mostly successful.