Civil Rights Cases
Many African-American leaders were outraged and disappointed that the Supreme Court declared the first two sections of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to be unconstitutional. On October 20, 1883, T. Thomas Fortune, the editor of the New York Globe wrote: "The colored people of the United States feel to-day as if they had been baptized in ice water". Many felt it was the end of an era in which the Federal government would protect the rights of African-American citizens.