Civil Rights History in Iowa

Introduction

Iowa has a proud history of leading in civil rights advancements. During its territorial years, a vigorous abolitionist movement planted the seeds for Iowa to become, by the end of the Civil War, one of the Union's most racially egalitarian states. Iowa passed one of the nation's first civil rights laws in 1884. Several cases before the Iowa Supreme Court, including the very first case heard, have radically reshaped our state's approach to civil rights – putting us, in many cases, years or decades ahead of the rest of the country. While these decisions may have been controversial at the time, history now views them as both advanced and courageous.

The Role of the Courts

From its earliest days, the Iowa judiciary has played a preeminent and indispensable role in protecting the state constitution's guarantees of freedom, equality, and inalienable rights. This tradition of judicial leadership and independence is so essential to the state's history that the Iowa Judicial Branch devotes a section of its web site to the state's early civil rights cases. "Like the courts of today," the Judicial Branch explains, "the early Iowa courts were sometimes called upon to decide cases that involved volatile social or political controversies of the time. . . . These decisions demonstrate legal foresight as well as a deep and abiding respect for the values enshrined in our Constitution and Bill of Rights." This history sheds valuable light on the role of the judiciary in deciding whether state officials may exclude same-sex couples from the protections and responsibilities of marriage.

In its very first decision, the Iowa Supreme Court considered the case of Ralph, a former Missouri slave whose master, Jordan Montgomery, allowed him to go to Dubuque to earn money to buy his freedom. After Ralph had been in Iowa for five years, Montgomery sent agents into the state to reclaim him by force. The Supreme Court held that since Montgomery had given Ralph permission to resettle in Iowa, the former slave could not be labeled a fugitive. Although the court ruled that Ralph was obligated to pay the $550 Montgomery had demanded for his freedom, such a debt could not form a basis on which any "man in this territory can be reduced to slavery." The case of Ralph stands in sharp contrast to the infamous Dred Scott decision 18 years later, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that even in free states, slaves had no legal claim to freedom.

On the question of "separate but equal" systems of education, the Iowa Supreme Court was nearly a century ahead of its federal counterpart in declaring segregated schools to be intolerable and contrary to law. The 1868 case, Clark v. Board of Directors, concerned Susan B. Clark, a 12-year-old girl who had been denied admission to Muscatine Grammar School No. 2 because of her race. The court said the local school board had no authority to deny African-American children the right to equal education merely because "public sentiment in their district is opposed to the intermingling of white and colored children." To do so "would be to sanction a plain violation of the spirit of our laws [and] tend to perpetuate the national differences of our people and stimulate a constant strife." Not until Brown v. Board of Education would the U.S. Supreme Court locate the federal constitutional principles and summon the courage to reach the same conclusion.

Five years after Clark, the Iowa Supreme Court considered the case of Emma Coger, a mixed-race woman who had been forcibly removed from a steamboat dining cabin reserved for whites. In holding that Coger was entitled to the same rights and privileges as white passengers, the court invoked the federal Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment, but ultimately rested its conclusion on Art. I, § 1 of the Iowa Constitution:

The decision is planted on the broad and just ground of the equality of all men before the law, which is not limited by color, nationality, religion or condition in life. This principle of equality is announced and secured by the very first words of our State constitution which relate to the rights of the people, in language most comprehensive, and incapable of misconstruction, namely: "All men are, by nature, free and equal."

The Iowa Supreme Court's "fundamental concern for equal treatment for all" also led to breakthroughs for women. As early as 1869, it ruled that women could not be denied the right to practice law. As a result, Arabella Mansfield became the first woman admitted to the bar in any state of the Union – three years before the U.S. Supreme Court would rule that women did not have a right to practice law under the federal Constitution. The Iowa judiciary also was one of the first to hold that the Nineteenth Amendment, in extending to women the right to vote, made them eligible for jury service as well. Seven years after the amendment was ratified in 1920, Iowa was still among only a minority of states where women served on juries.

In 1949, the Iowa Supreme Court returned to the issue of racial equality in State v. Katz. The case involved two African-American Des Moines residents who had been refused ice cream at a downtown soda fountain. The store manager was tried and convicted under a state statute originally passed in the late 1880s making it a crime to refuse service on the basis of race. The Supreme Court affirmed the conviction. As one authority on Iowa's African-American history has written, the state's civil rights pioneers not only "had the courage and conviction to challenge injustice," they also "found support in Iowa's institutions," including her courts.

What Does it Mean? Constitutional scholar Suzanna Sherry cites Clark as a prominent example of one of the noblest yet most fragile traditions of American self government: judges willing to assert their independence when fidelity to the law and constitutional principles requires it, even when doing so runs "contrary to both popular sentiment and legislative will." Sherry argues that such courageous and independent judges have been "vindicated by history."

Selected texts above are quoted from the Brief of Amici Curiae, Professors of Law and History, Varnum v. Brien. For more information about Varnum v. Brien click here.