Civil Rights Act may refer to several civil right acts in the United States. These acts of the United States Congress are meant to protect rights to ensure individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals.
The first wave of civil rights acts were passed during the Reconstruction era after the American Civil War. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 extends the rights of emancipated slaves by stating that any person born in the United States regardless of race is an American citizen. The Enforcement Acts of 1870–1871 allows the President to protect Black American men’s right to vote, to hold office, to serve on juries, and for Black men and women to receive equal protection of laws, including protection from racist violence. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 prohibited discrimination in "public accommodations" until it was found unconstitutional in 1883 by the Supreme Court of the United States. The Jim Crow Laws were established during the 19th century and served to block African American votes, ban integration in public facilities such as schools, and forbid interracial marriage in the South. The enactment of these laws was able to vastly undermine the progress toward equality which was made during the Reconstruction era.
Civil Rights Acts would not be passed for 82 more years until the success of the Civil rights movement which aimed to abolish legalized racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement in the country, which was most commonly employed against African Americans. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 established the Civil Rights Commission and the Civil Rights Act of 1960 established federal inspection of local voter registration polls. The landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin by federal and state governments as well as public places. The Civil Rights Act of 1968 prohibits discrimination in sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, creed, and national origin. The Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987 specifies that recipients of federal funds must comply with civil rights laws in all areas, not just in the particular program or activity that received federal funding. The Civil Rights Act of 1990 was a bill that would have made it easier for plaintiffs to win civil rights cases which was vetoed by President George H. W. Bush. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 prohibits discrimination based on disability. The Civil Rights Act of 1991 provides the right to trial by jury on discrimination claims and introducing the possibility of emotional distress damages, while limiting the amount that a jury could award.
Background
The first shift towards equality for African Americans occurred when President Abraham Lincoln passed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, which declared that "all persons held as slaves... shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free...". As initially ratified, the United States Constitution granted each state complete discretion to determine voter qualifications for its residents.United States Constitution art. I, sec. 2, cl. 1
In American history, the Reconstruction era was the period from 1865-1877 following the end of the American Civil War. This period was marked by various attempts made to redress the inequities imposed on African Americans through slavery. Three Reconstruction Amendments were ratified and limited this discretion. The Thirteenth Amendment (1865) prohibits slavery "except as a punishment for crime"; the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) grants citizenship to anyone "born or naturalized in the United States" and guarantees every person due process and equal protection rights; and the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) provides that "[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." These amendments were established to provide African Americans the same civil rights as white Americans, and also empower Congress to enforce their provisions through "appropriate legislation". This time period marked the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement.
To enforce the Reconstruction Amendments, Congress passed the Enforcement Acts in the 1870s. The acts criminalized the obstruction of a citizen's voting rights and provided for federal supervision of the electoral process, including voter registration. By 1873, Supreme Court decisions began to limit the scope of Reconstruction legislation, and many whites resorted to intimidation and violence to undermine African Americans' voting rights. In 1875 the Supreme Court struck down parts of the legislation as unconstitutional in United States v. Cruikshank and United States v. Reese.
The Compromise of 1877, an informal agreement to resolve a political dispute, marked the end of the Reconstruction era. After the Reconstruction Era ended in 1877, enforcement of these civil rights laws ceased, and in 1894, Congress repealed most of their provisions. Southern Democrats largely stopped adhering to the provisions of Reconstruction legislation, ceasing to intervene in Southern voting practices, which prompted widespread disenfranchisement of African American voters during and after Reconstruction. From 1868 to 1888, electoral fraud and violence throughout the South suppressed the African-American vote. From 1888 to 1908, Southern states legalized disenfranchisement by enacting Jim Crow laws; they amended their constitutions and passed legislation to impose various voting restrictions, including literacy tests, poll taxes, property-ownership requirements, moral character tests, requirements that voter registration applicants interpret particular documents, and grandfather clauses that allowed otherwise-ineligible persons to vote if their grandfathers voted (which excluded many African Americans whose grandfathers had been slaves or otherwise ineligible). During this period, the Supreme Court generally upheld efforts to discriminate against racial minorities. In Giles v. Harris (1903), the court held that regardless of the Fifteenth Amendment, the judiciary did not have the remedial power to force states to register racial minorities to vote.
The Civil Rights Act of 1866
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 (, enacted April 9, 1866, reenacted 1870) was the first United States federal law to define citizenship and affirm that all citizens are equally protected by the law. It was mainly intended, in the wake of the American Civil War, to protect the civil rights of persons of African descent born in or brought to the United States.Civil Rights Act of 1866
The Act was passed by Congress in 1866 and vetoed by U.S. President Andrew Johnson. In April 1866, Congress again passed the bill to support the Thirteenth Amendment, and Johnson again vetoed it, but a two-thirds majority in each chamber overrode the veto to allow it to become law without presidential signature.
John Bingham and other congressmen argued that Congress did not yet have sufficient constitutional power to enact this law. Following passage of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, Congress ratified the 1866 Act in 1870.
The act had three primary objectives for the integration of African Americans into the American society following the Civil War: 1.) a definition of American citizenship 2.) the rights which come with this citizenship and 3.) the unlawfulness to deprive any person of citizenship rights "on the basis of race, color, or prior condition of slavery or involuntary servitude." The act accomplished these three primary objectives.
The author of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 was United States Senator Lyman Trumbull.Lash, Kurt. "The Origins of the Privileges or Immunities Clause, Part II: John Bingham and the Second Draft of the Fourteenth Amendment ", Georgetown Law Journal, Volume 99, p. 361 (2011). Congressman James F. Wilson summarized what he considered to be the purpose of the act as follows, when he introduced the legislation in the House of Representatives:Congressional Globe, House of Representatives, 39th Congress, 1st Session , p. 1117 (March 1, 1866).
During the subsequent legislative process, the following key provision was deleted: "there shall be no discrimination in civil rights or immunities among the inhabitants of any State or Territory of the United States on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." John Bingham was an influential supporter of this deletion, on the ground that courts might construe the term "civil rights" more broadly than people like Wilson intended.Kull, Andrew. The Color-Blind Constitution , pp. 75–78 (Harvard University Press, 1994). Weeks later, Senator Trumbull described the bill's intended scope:Lash, Kurt. "The Origins of the Privileges or Immunities Clause, Part II: John Bingham and the Second Draft of the Fourteenth Amendment ", Georgetown Law Journal, Volume 99, p. 394 (2011). This statement by Senator Trumbull was discussed by both the majority as well as by dissenting Justice Harlan in the Supreme Court case of Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U.S. 409 (1968). See the transcript from April 4, 1866 .
On April 5, 1866, the Senate overrode President Andrew Johnson's veto. This marked the first time that the U.S. Congress ever overrode a presidential veto for a major piece of legislation.
Content With an incipit of "An Act to protect all Persons in the United States in their Civil Rights, and furnish the Means of their vindication", the act declared that all people born in the United States who are not subject to any foreign power are entitled to be citizens, without regard to race, color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude. A similar provision (called the Citizenship Clause) was written a few months later into the proposed Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 also said that any citizen has the same right that a white citizen has to make and enforce contracts, sue and be sued, give evidence in court, and inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property. Additionally, the act guaranteed to all citizens the "full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens, and ... like punishment, pains, and penalties..." Persons who denied these rights on account of race or previous enslavement were guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction faced a fine not exceeding $1,000, or imprisonment not exceeding one year, or both.
The act used language very similar to that of the Equal Protection Clause in the newly proposed Fourteenth Amendment. In particular, the act discussed the need to provide "reasonable protection to all persons in their constitutional rights of equality before the law, without distinction of race or color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. ..."
This statute was a major part of general federal policy during Reconstruction, and was closely related to the Second Freedmen's Bureau Act of 1866. According to Congressman John Bingham, "the seventh and eighth sections of the Freedmen's Bureau bill enumerate the same rights and all the rights and privileges that are enumerated in the first section of this [the Civil Rights] bill."Halbrook, Stephen. Freedmen, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Right to Bear Arms, 1866–1876, page 29 (Greenwood Publishing Group 1998).
Parts of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 are enforceable into the 21st century, according to the United States Code: