Civil Rights Act - Essay Example

14089 Civil Rights Act The History towards the Civil Rights Act today Government Class Professor (name) May 1 2008 14089 2 14089 Academic Research Assignment 222503 May 1 2008 Civil Rights Act The History towards today When the Civil War ended in 1865 the period of Reconstruction began. The Federal Government started to provide some protection in the Civil Rights for the newly freed slaves. It was the beginning of a long struggle. Soon after the Civil Rights were established, separation and segregation, began for the black. The gained rights were taken away and many cases before the Supreme Court began. This paper guides through the process which let eventually to the Civil Rights Act as it is today, full citizenship for the black: 1. Period of Reconstruction 2. Jim Crow Laws 3. Civil Right Cases 1883 4. Plessy versus Ferguson 5. Brown versus Board of Education Period of Reconstruction Reconstruction, also known as Radical Reconstruction, was the period after the American Civil War. During this time, the South was in political, social, and economic turmoil and eleven Confederate states had already seceded from the Union during the wartime unrest. In response, the Union 10489 3 attempted to regain order in the Confederate states during the Reconstruction era. The ex-slave states were divided into 5 military districts by the Reconstruction Act of 1867 and an assistant commissioner was appointed to each district. (McElrath 2008 Afroamhistory.about.com) After the Civil War, Congress established a Bureau for the refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, known as the Freedmen's Bureau. We find in McElrath's article that it provided with food, medical care, helped with resettlement, and very noble it established schools. Due to inadequate funds, corruption and inefficiency it closed in 1870. While the Freedmen's Bureau worked to help Southern blacks, opposition to their new freedom was mounting. In 1865, several Southern states passed legislation creating black codes. Depending upon the state, these laws generally restricted blacks' right to own property, controlled where they were allowed to live, established a curfew, and forced blacks to work as agricultural laborers or as domestics. The Black Codes were quickly eliminated with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The Act gave blacks the rights and privileges of full citizenship. (McElrath Afroamhistory.about.com 2008). The Reconstruction Act of 1867 eliminated white controlled Governments. President Johnson, successor of Lincoln had reneged his promise to implement Lincoln's Reconstruction plan so that States could revise legislatures and implement less severe codes instead of eliminating all the black codes. With the Reconstruction Act, blacks were given the the freedom to participate in the political process. Black became ordinary 10489 4 to kill and torture the black. Affter the Reconstruction ended all changed at constitutional conventions, helped to write laws and became state legislators. In June 1866, Congress proposed the 14th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution. It provided blacks with citizenship and guaranteed that federal and state laws applied equally to blacks and whites. With the passage of the Amendment, Congress also provided that Southern states could not be readmitted to the Union until it ratified the 14th Amendment. All of the states, except Tennessee, refused to do so. By 1870, however, the remaining 10 states ratified the 14th Amendment. (McElrath Afroamhistory.about.com 2008). In 1870, African Americans were given the right to vote through the 15th Amendment. According to this amendment, the right to vote applied to citizens regardless of race or color. Despite this right, some Southern states added grandfather clauses to their state Constitutions in an effort to counter this new right. Typical clauses stated that the right to vote extended only to citizens or their descendants who had the right to vote prior to 1866 or 1867. By the end of 1877, all of the gains of Reconstruction disappeared and blacks were again relegated to second-class citizenship. It was not until the civil rights movement in the 1960s that blacks would finally receive full citizenship rights. (McElrath Afroamhistory.about.com 2008). Jim Crow Laws The Jim Crow Laws created the worst period for the freed slaves. They started after 1877. Davis (2008) wrote on www.jimcrowhistory.org an a article to overview this horrible period. In his essay he states that in 10489 5 response to the efforts made for the black, a stepped-up reign of White Power started in the South. The decade of the 1880s was characterized by mob lynchings, a vicious system of convict prison farms and chain gangs , the horribly debilitating debt peonage of sharecropping , the imposition of a legal color line in race relations, and a variety of laws that blatantly discriminated against blacks. Some southern states, for example, moved to legally impose segregation on public transportation, especially on trains. Blacks were required to sit in a special car reserved for blacks known as "The Jim Crow Car," even if they had bought first-class tickets. Some states also passed so-called miscegenation laws banning interracial marriages. These bans were, in the opinion of some historians, the "ultimate segregation laws." They clearly announced that blacks were so inferior to whites that any mixing of the two threatened the very survival of the superior white race. Almost all southern states passed statutes restricting suffrage in the years from 1871 to 1889, including poll taxes in some cases. And the effects were devastating: over half the blacks voting in Georgia and South Carolina in 1880, for example, had vanished from the polls in 1888. Of those who did vote, many of their ballots were stolen, misdirected to opposing candidates, or simply not counted. (Davis 2008). In the end, black resistance to segregation was difficult because the system of land tenancy, known as sharecropping, left most blacks economically dependent upon planter-landlords and merchant suppliers. Also, the white terror at the hands of lynch mobs threatened all members of the black family-- adults and children alike. This reality made it nearly impossible for blacks to 10489 6 stand up to Jim Crow because such actions might bring down the wrath of the white mob on one's parents, brothers, spouse, and children. Few black families, moreover, were economically well off enough to buck the local white power structure of banks, merchants, and landlords. To put it succinctly: impoverished and often illiterate southern blacks were in a weak position in the 1890s for confronting the racist culture of Jim Crow. (Davis 2008) Civil Right Cases 1883 Pearson Education (2005) gives an overview of the cases that lead to the Civil Right Cases of 1883. The case presented for the Supreme Court should speak for the implementation of the 14th and 15th Amendment according to segregation. The question was about equal rights for the black, where they protected or not under the Amendments. Historical background according to Pearson 2005: Between 1866 and 1875, Congress passed several civil rights acts to implement the 13th and 14th amendments. One was the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which imposed various criminal penalties against private businesses that practiced racial discrimination. Penalties were imposed on any owner of a public establishment or conveyance who practised racial discrimination in the conduct of his or her business. Many Northerners and Southerners opposed to Reconstruction saw the law as an infringement of personal freedom of choice. By the 1870s, various white supremacist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, were using both nonviolent and violent means throughout the South to influence politics and intimidate African Americans. In 1877, when withdrawal of federal troops brought the Reconstruction period to a close, Southern 10489 7 legislatures began to pass laws and establish practices which created separate societies for whites and African Americans. Circumstances of the Case were a number of cases collected and Presented to the Supreme Court during the term 1882-1883. They involved application of the federal law by Afro American such as exclusion from Hotel Dining (Kopeka Kansas), the Opera of New York City, better seats in the theatre of San Francisco and a car set aside for ladies. The case examined the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 in light of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Did the Act of 1875 violate the Constitution Was the conduct of business by a private person subject to the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment Did the amendment prohibit State governments from discriminating, but permit private persons to discriminate under "freedom of choice" (that is, "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone") What protections did the 13th and 14th amendments provide for citizens (Pearson 2005) Arguments were laid down in For elimination private segregation and for private segregation as we read in the following quotes: For eliminating private segregation: The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was constitutional. The 13th and 14th amendments were clearly intended to "remove the last vestiges of slavery" from America. To permit private discrimination would be to "permit the badges and incidents of slavery" to linger in the South. The Federal Government had the authority to protect citizens from private and State actions that deprived them of their rights. For eliminating private segregation: The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was 10489 8 constitutional. The 13th and 14th amendments were clearly intended to "remove the last vestiges of slavery" from America. To permit private discrimination would be to "permit the badges and incidents of slavery" to linger in the South. The Federal Government had the authority to protect citizens from private and State actions that deprived them of their rights. (Pearson 2005). The decision was drastic. The black lost all of the cases. The 8-1 decision of the Court was delivered by Justice Joseph P. Bradley, with John Marshall Harlan of Kentucky alone in dissent. The Court decided that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional. Neither the 13th nor the 14th amendment empowers the Congress to legislate in matters of racial discrimination in the private sector, Bradley wrote. "The 13th Amendment has respect, not to distinctions of racebut to slavery." The 14th Amendment, he continued, applied to State, not private, actions; furthermore, the abridgment of rights presented in this case are to be considered as "ordinary civil injur[ies]" rather than the imposition of badges of slavery. Justice Harlan, the lone dissenter in the Civil Rights Cases, as he was to be later on Plessy, made a point in the latter case whose echo is still heard today: "The Constitution is color-blind: it neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens." Seventy-one years would pass after his first dissent, however, before a majority of the Supreme Court embraced Harlan's interpretation. Plessy versus Ferguson Plessy versus Ferguson, is an important case for the Supreme Court. On June 7, 1892 Homer Plessy was jailed for sitting in the "White" car of the East Louisiana Railroad. Plessy was one-eight black and seven-eight 10489 9 white. The Louisiana law considered Plessy never the less black and he should have traveled in the "Colored" car instead. Plessy went to court to argue that the Separate Car Act violated the 13th and 14th Amendment to the Constitution. The outcome of the case was devastating for Plessy. The judge at the trial was John Howard Ferguson, a lawyer from Massachusetts who had previously declared the Separate Car Act "unconstitutional on trains that traveled through several states". In Plessy's case, however, he decided that the state could choose to regulate railroad companies that operated only within Louisiana. He found Plessy guilty of refusing to leave the white car. Plessy appealed to the Supreme Court of Louisiana, which upheld Ferguson's decision. In 1896, the Supreme Court of the United States heard Plessy's case and found him guilty once again (Cozzens 1995), Cozzens continues with the arguments of the case before the Supreme Court. Justice Henry Brown wrote that the 13th Amendment, for the Abolished Slaves was merely a legal distinction between white and colored races. Justice John Harlan wrote what we saw above under Jim Crow, "Our Constitution is not color-blind". The Plessy decision set the precedent that "separate" facilities for blacks and whites were constitutional as long as they were "equal." The "separate but equal" doctrine was quickly extended to cover many areas of public life, such as restaurants, theaters, restrooms, and public schools. Brown versus Board of Education Brown versus the Board of Education is the case that ended the separate but equal doctrine. In the early 1950's racial segregation was normal 10489 10 in public schools. Many articles are written after this case took place. The essence of the case is as follows: In Topeka, Kansas, a black third-grader named Linda Brown had to walk one mile through a railroad switchyard to get to her black elementary school, even though a white elementary school was only seven blocks away. Linda's father, Oliver Brown, tried to enroll her in the white elementary school, but the principal of the school refused. Brown went to McKinley Burnett, the head of Topeka's branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and asked for help. The NAACP was eager to assist the Browns, as it had long wanted to challenge segregation in public schools. With Brown's complaint, it had "the right plaintiff at the right time." Other black parents joined Brown, and, in 1951, the NAACP requested an injunction that would forbid the segregation of Topeka's public schools. (Cozzens 1995). The NAACP argued on this case before the US District Court that segregated schools send a message to black children to be inferior to whites. Therefor the schools were inherently unequal (Cozzens 1995). The Board of Education defense was that, because segregation in Topeka elsewhere pervaded many other aspects of life, segregated schools simply prepared black children for the segregation they would face during adulthood. Also argued that is was not necessarily harmful (Cozzens 1995). Brown won the case with other cases before the Supreme Court after the request for an injunction put the court in a difficult decision. The Supreme Court struck down the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy for public education, ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, and required the desegregation of 10489 11 schools across America. The Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision did not abolish segregation in other public areas, such as restaurants and restrooms, nor did it require desegregation of public schools by a specific time. It did, however, declare the permissive or mandatory segregation that existed in 21 states unconstitutional. It was a giant step towards complete desegregation of public schools. Even partial desegregation of these schools, however, was still very far away, as would soon become apparent. All the actions taken from the period of Reconstruction till the Brown Case had a bright impact in society. From nothing till full citizenship the black fought for nearly 100 years. However the words of Justice Harlan still echo today, don't you agree References About.com Jessica McElrath (2008) African-American History http://afroamhistory.about.com/cs/reconstruction/a/reconstruction.htm April 26 2008 Ronald L.F. Davis Ph. D (2008) From Terror to Triumph: Historical Overview http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/overview.htm April 27 2008 Pearson Education Inc (2005) Civil Rights cases 1883 http://www.infoplease.com/us/supreme-court/cases/ar06.html April 27 2008 Watson Organization Lisa Cozzens (1995) Plessy versus Ferguson http://www.watson.org/lisa/blackhistory/post-civilwar/plessy.html April 28 2008 Watson Organization Lisa Cozzens (1995) Brown versus Boars of Education http://www.watson.org/lisa/blackhistory/early-civilrights/brown.html April 29 2008 Read More