A Wife's Chronicle
Malvina Shanklin Harlan (1839-1916)
"Some Memories of A Long Life"
Typescript memoir, 1915
[published in the
Journal of Supreme Court History, 2001]
Manuscript Division (102.2)
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In this memoir Malvina Harlan chronicled her fifty-four-year marriage
to Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan (1833-1911), a Kentucky
lawyer and former slaveholder. During his thirty-four years on the
court, Harlan was an important dissenting voice in key rulings on
civil rights, including the Civil Rights cases of 1883 and Plessy
v. Ferguson in 1896. In 1883 the high court effectively
overturned the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Originally championed by
Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner, the 1875 act guaranteed federal
protection to "citizens of every race and color" in their access
to accommodations such as railroads, hotels, theaters and "other
places of public amusement." While the majority of the court ruled
narrowly in 1883 that regulation of civil rights was the prerogative
of the states, Harlan argued that Congress was within its powers
to pass appropriate legislation to enforce the spirit of equality
intended in the passage of the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments
to the Constitution. Here his wife notes "as all lawyers know, the
Court declared the Sumner Act unconstitutional, my husband alone
dissenting."
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