Civil Rights Court Cases?

Dear Legal Eagle,

Thank you for posting your request on History Hub! 

Court record research requires three key pieces of information: location of filing, general time frame of filing, and case file type (e.g., state v. federal).

Court records are divided between federal and state courts, with all state courts records maintained by each state. To locate court records for each state, begin your search at this listing of State Archives or the Department of Justice’s State and Federal Courts Resources page. Either site will provide source and contact information for state’s archives and court records. 

Federal court records are maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Circuit and District court records are maintained by the regional National Archives facility that handles that state. Supreme Court records are maintained at the National Archives at Washington, DC and the National Archives at College Park, MD. The National Archives does not have a nationwide master list of case files by name, type, or content. Records are arranged sequentially by case file number--not by the type of civil suit.

Depending on the type of federal court and the date of the case, there may be indexes and dockets available to assist in locating a particular court case file. Search for digitized case files in the National Archives Catalog by entering the case’s party name(s) and/or name variations. 

If the search is unsuccessful, determine where the case would have been filed (e.g., “U.S. District Court for the Central Division of California” or “U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit”). Using the court location, contact the facility noted in the guide where the records are located for further assistance. 

Please see the History Hub blog Case File Indexes Created by the Federal Courts: Introduction (Part 1 of 3), Case File Indexes Created by the Federal Courts: Index Examples (Part 2 of 3), and Case File Indexes Created by the Federal Courts: Digitized and Digital Indexes (Part 3 of 3) for more information. Please review this information before trying to order records online. 

Generally, federal court records less than 15 years old are still in the possession of individual courts and are not in the custody of the National Archives. To obtain access to those records, you must contact the appropriate federal court.

All National Archives facilities will have some civil rights-related court cases. Several of these offices provide online resources to help navigate what is available. One location in particular maintains a significant portion of civil rights-related cases, and that is the National Archives at Atlanta, GA.

The National Archives at Atlanta maintains the federal court records of the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. The National Archives at Atlanta has kept an online listing of known civil rights and civil liberties-related court cases held by their office. Explore more about these in a recently published blog post on the History Hub.

The National Archives at Chicago listing of known civil rights cases includes cases related to the Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964. The National Archives at Boston and the National Archives at Philadelphia also have cases involving school desegregation and other aspects concerning civil rights. Court case files involving racial discrimination and cases impacted by the Chinese Exclusion Act are found at the National Archives at San Francisco. 

Many cases concerning civil rights would be ultimately determined by the U.S. Supreme Court.  Records related to civil rights, civil liberties, and equal opportunity cases that were heard by the Supreme Court are found in the transcripts of oral arguments and the appellate case files located at the National Archives building in Washington, DC. Supreme Court oral recordings are held by the Moving Image and Sound Branch, located at the National Archives at College Park, MD. For requesting other cases, this History Hub blog will help guide you through that process.

Some well-known federal court cases like Brown v. Board of Education, are digitized and are available online in the catalog. Researchers can expect to find the digitized cases filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas and the U.S. Supreme Court as well as related materials. 

The decisions of these court cases impacted many government agencies and decision-making by various Presidential administrations. For how these rulings impacted government agencies, run searches within the National Archives Catalog to see how various agencies and the military handled the court decisions. 

As for Presidential administrations, civil rights rulings could factor into decision-making by those administrations, even decades after the case was decided. Many Presidential libraries maintain online resource information concerning matters involving civil rights, including the ramifications of court decisions. For example, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library maintains a website on the Brown vs. Board of Education decision as well as the resulting Little Rock school integration crisis.

We hope this is helpful. Best of luck with your research!