"I have no reason to suppose that he, who would take away my Liberty, would not when he had me in his Power, take away everything else." -John Locke
"Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can." -Sam Adams
"Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can" -Sam Adams
"Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty." -John Adams
"Property is more than the thing which a person owns. It is elementary that it includes the right to acquire, use, and dispose of it. The Constitution protects these essential attributes of property .... There can be conception of property aside from its control and use, and upon its use depends its value." -Supreme Court decision, 1917
"They have erected a system of national land-use regulation that brings minimal ecological benefits and substantial harm to the liberties of Americans." -Richard Miniter
"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government." -Thomas Jefferson
bttt
"Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can." -Sam Adams
"Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can" -Sam Adams
IT WAS WORTH REPEATING TWICE!
Looks like we just took way too many steps backwards into history.
The case presented does not deal with an attempt to prohibit the amalgamation of the races. The right which the ordinance annulled was the civil right of a white man to dispose of his property if he saw fit to do so to a person of color and of a colored person to make such disposition to a white person. It is urged that this proposed segregation will promote the public peace by preventing race conflicts. Desirable as this is, and important as is the preservation of the public peace, this aim cannot be accomplished by laws or ordinances which deny rights created or protected by the federal Constitution. [245 U.S. 60, 82] It is said that such acquisitions by colored persons depreciate property owned in the neighborhood by white persons. But property may be acquired by undesirable white neighbors or put to disagreeable though lawful uses with like results. We think this attempt to prevent the alienation of the property in question to a person of color was not a legitimate exercise of the police power of the state, and is in direct violation of the fundamental law enacted in the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution preventing state interference with property rights except by due process of law. That being the case, the ordinance cannot stand. Booth v. Illinois, 184 U.S. 425, 429 , 22 S. Sup. Ct. 425; Otis v. Parker, 187 U.S. 606, 609 , 23 S. Sup. Ct. 168.
Here is the full opinion.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=245&invol=60