The following landmark cases show how the Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution with regard to the rights of blacks, reflecting the changing values of the times.

The Dred Scott Case (18S7): Dred Scott was a slave whose owner had moved with him to Illinois and then to Wisconsin territory, where slavery was forbidden. Scott sued on the grounds that the time he had spent there made him a free man. Ruling against him, the Court said: "We think (slaves) ... are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States."

The Plessy v. Ferguson Case (1896): Homer Plessy, the plaintiff, had been charged with breaking the law when he refused to move into a 'coloreds only' railway car. In court he argued that he had not been given 'equal protection of the law'. The Court ruled that as long as the facilities for blacks and whites were equal segregation did not violate the Constitution. This doctrine of 'separate but equal' became the basis of court decisions until the 1950s.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954): Linda Brown lived five blocks from the nearest public school in her hometown of Topeka, Kansas, yet because she was black she had to go to a school twenty blocks away. Her parents sued the Board of Education on the grounds that this segregation law was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court decided in favour of the plaintiffs. In 1955 it ruled that desegregation was to begin "with all deliberate speed".

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978): A white male, Alan Bakke, sued the University of California for denying him a place at the medical school, even though less qualified non-whites had been admitted. He argued that the University's strict quota system violated the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court ruled in his favour, but allowed that race could be considered as one of many factors.