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CIVIL
RIGHTS
 GENERAL INFO

The terms civil rights and civil liberties are sometimes used
interchangeably, scholars make a distinction between the
two;
• CIVIL LIBERTIES are basically limitations on
government. They specify what the government cannot do
• CIVIL RIGHTS, in contrast, specify what the government
must do to ensure equal protection and freedom from
discrimination
THE AFRICAN
AMERICAN
EXPERIENCE AND
THE CIVIL RIGHTS
MOVEMENT
 GENERAL INFO

•With the emancipation of the slaves by President

Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and the
passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth
Amendments during the Reconstruction period (1865–
1877) following the Civil War, constitutional inequality
was ended.
 CONSTITUTIONAL
AMENDMENTS
The Thirteenth Amendment (1865) states that neither slavery nor
involuntary servitude shall exist within the United States. The
Fourteenth Amendment (1868) tells us that all persons born or
naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States.
- “[n]o State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall
any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due
process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the
equal protection of the laws.”
 THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACTS OF
1865 TO 1875
- The Civil Rights Act of 1866 implemented the extension of
citizenship to anyone born in the United States and gave African
Americans full equality under the law.
- The Enforcement Act of 1870 set out specific criminal penalties for
interfering with the right to vote as protected by the Fifteenth
Amendment and by the Civil Rights Act of 1866.
- the Civil Rights Act of 1872, known as the Anti–Ku Klux Klan Act.
This act made it a federal crime for anyone to use law or custom to
deprive an individual of rights, privileges, and immunities secured by
the Constitution or by any federal law.
 PLESSY
PLESSY V.
V. FERGUSON:
FERGUSON:
SEPARATE
SEPARATE BUT
BUT EQUAL.
EQUAL.
- In 1896, the United States Supreme Court rejected Plessy’s
contention in Plessy v. Ferguson. The Court concluded that the
Fourteenth Amendment “could not have been intended to abolish
distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social . . . equality.”
- Plessy v. Ferguson became the judicial cornerstone of racial
discrimination throughout the United States. The result was a
system of racial segregation, particularly in the South, supported
by state and local “Jim Crow” laws. (Jim Crow was an insulting
term for African Americans derived from a song-and-dance show.)
 VOTING BARRIERS
- The brief voting enfranchisement of African Americans ended after
1877, when the federal troops that occupied the South during the
Reconstruction era were withdrawn.
- The white primary was upheld by the Supreme Court until 1944, when
the Court ruled it a violation of the Fifteenth Amendment.
- The grandfather clause, which restricted voting to those who could
prove that their ancestors had voted before 1867.
- Poll taxes required the payment of a fee to vote. Thus, poor African
Americans—as well as poor whites—who could not afford to pay the
tax were excluded from voting.
 EXTRA-LEGAL METHODS OF
ENFORCING WHITE SUPREMACY
- The second-class status of African Americans was also a matter of
social custom, especially in the South. In their interactions with
southern whites, African Americans were expected to observe an
informal but detailed code of behavior that confirmed their
inferiority.
- The code was backed up by the common practice of - lynching—
mob action to murder an accused individual, usually by hanging
and sometimes accompanied by torture.
 THE END
THE END OF
OF THE
THE SEPARATE-
SEPARATE-
BUT-EQUAL DOCTRINE
BUT-EQUAL DOCTRINE
- As early as the 1930s, several court rulings began to
chip away at the separate-but-equal doctrine. The
United States Supreme Court did not explicitly
overturn Plessy v. Ferguson until 1954, however,
when it issued one of the most famous judicial
decisions in U.S. history.
 BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION
OF TOPEKA.
- The 1954 unanimous decision of the Supreme
Court in Brown v. Board of Education of
Topeka5 established that the segregation of
races in the public schools violates the equal
protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
 CONSTITUTIONAL
AMENDMENTS
- The white South did not let the Supreme Court ruling go
unchallenged. Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas used
the state’s National Guard to block the integration of
Central High School in Little Rock in September 1957.
- President Dwight Eisenhower had to federalize the
Arkansas National Guard and send in the Army’s 101st
Airborne Division to quell violent resistance
 DE JURE AND DE FACTO
SEGREGATION
- The kind of segregation faced by Linda Carol
Brown and James Meredith is called de jure
segregation, because it is the result of
discriminatory laws or government actions. (De
jure is Latin for “by law.”)
 THE
THE CIVIL
CIVIL RIGHTS
RIGHTS
MOVEMENT
MOVEMENT
- The Brown decisions applied only to public schools. Not much
else in the structure of existing segregation was affected. In
December 1955, an African American woman, Rosa Parks,
boarded a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama.
- The protest was headed by a twenty-seven-year-old Baptist
minister, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1956, a federal district
court issued an injunction prohibiting the segregation of buses
in Montgomery. The era of civil rights protests had begun.
 KING’S PHILOSOPHY OF
NONVIOLENCE.
- In the following year, 1957, King formed the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC). King advocated nonviolent civil
disobedience as a means to achieve racial
justice.
 THE MARCH ON
WASHINGTON.
- In August 1963, African American leaders A. Philip
Randolph and Bayard Rustin organized the massive March
on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Before nearly a
quarter-million white and African American spectators and
millions watching on television, Martin Luther King told
the world: “I have a dream that my four little children will
one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by
the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
 THE
THE CIVIL
CIVIL RIGHTS
RIGHTS ACT
ACT OF
OF
1964.
1964.
- The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the most far-reaching
bill on civil rights in modern times, banned
discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion,
gender, or national origin. The act’s major provisions
were as follows:
IT OUTLAWED ARBITRARY DISCRIMINATION IN VOTER
REGISTRATION.

IT EXPANDED THE POWER OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS COMMISSION,

WHICH HAD BEEN CREATED IN 1957, AND EXTENDED ITS LIFE.

IT BARRED DISCRIMINATION IN PUBLIC ACCOMMODATIONS,

SUCH AS HOTELS AND RESTAURANTS, WHICH HAVE
OPERATIONS THAT AFFECT INTERSTATE COMMERCE.

IT PROVIDED FOR THE WITHHOLDING OF FEDERAL

FUNDS FROM PROGRAMS ADMINISTERED IN A
DISCRIMINATORY MANNER.
 THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF
1965.
- As late as 1960, only 29 percent of African
Americans of voting age were registered in the
southern states, in stark contrast to 61 percent of
whites. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 addressed this
issue. The act had two major provisions. The first
outlawed discriminatory voter-registration tests.
 THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1968 AND
OTHER HOUSING REFORM
LEGISLATION.
- The Civil Rights Act of 1968 banned discrimination
in most housing and provided penalties for those
attempting to interfere with individual civil rights
(giving protection to civil rights workers, among
others).
 CONSEQUENCES OF CIVIL
RIGHTS LEGISLATION
- As a result of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and
its amendments, and the large-scale voter-
registration drives in the South, the number of
African Americans registered to vote climbed
dramatically.
 POLITICAL PARTICIPATION
BY AFRICAN AMERICANS.
- Today, there are more than ten thousand African
American elected officials in the United States.
After the 2016 elections, the U. S. Congress
included fifty-one African Americans.
 LINGERING SOCIAL AND
ECONOMIC DISPARITIES
- Social and economic disparities between whites
and blacks (and other minorities) persist. The
median household income for African
Americans is about three-fifths of the white
median.
CIVIL RIGHTS
AND THE
COURTS
 STANDARDS FOR JUDICIAL
REVIEW
- Federal courts use three standards when engaging in judicial review of
laws or executive;
- strict scrutiny, is employed when fundamental rights are at stake, such
as those guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.
- intermediate, or exacting scrutiny. To pass the intermediate scrutiny
test, a law or government action “must further an important
government interest by means that are substantially related to that
interest.”
- Rational Basis Review, This test requires that an action or law be
“rationally related” to a “legitimate government interest.
 THE SUPREME COURT ADDRESSES
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
- As noted earlier in this chapter, the Civil Rights Act
of 1964 prohibited discrimination against any person
on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, or
gender. The act also established the right to equal
opportunity in employment. Affirmative action
policies attempt to “level the playing field” by giving
special preferences in educational admissions.
 IMPLEMENTING AFFIRMATIVE
ACTION
- In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson issued an
executive order mandating affirmative action policies
to remedy the effects of past discrimination. All
government agencies, including those of state and
local governments, were required to implement such
policies
 THE BAKKE CASE
- The first Supreme Court case addressing the
constitutionality of affirmative action examined a
program at the University of California, Davis. Allan
Bakke, a white student who had been turned down for
medical school at the Davis campus, discovered that his
academic record was better than those of some of the
minority applicants who had been admitted to the
program.
 ADDITIONAL LIMITS ON
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
- A number of cases decided during the 1980s and
1990s placed further limits on affirmative action
programs.
 THE END OF AFFIRMATIVE
ACTION?
- Despite the position taken by the Supreme Court
in the University of Michigan Law School case,
affirmative action is subject to serious threats. In
2007, the Supreme Court tightened the
guidelines for permissible affirmative action
programs
 LINGERING SOCIAL AND
ECONOMIC DISPARITIES
- Social and economic disparities between whites
and blacks (and other minorities) persist. The
median household income for African
Americans is about three-fifths of the white
median.
EXPERIENCES
OF OTHER
MINORITY
GROUPS
 GENERAL INFO

• Two groups deserve mention: Hispanic Americans, or

Latinos, are now the nation’s largest minority group by
population. American Indians are notable for their
unusual and troubled history, and of course because
they were here first.
 LATINOS AND THE
IMMIGRATION ISSUE
- The law recognizes that Latinos, or Hispanics, have been
subjected to many of the same forms of ill treatment as
African Americans. Therefore, Latinos are usually grouped
with African Americans and American Indians in laws and
programs that seek to protect minorities from
discrimination or to address the results of past
discrimination.
 IMMIGRATION
- The most striking characteristic of Latinos is that
many of them are relatively recent immigrants. A
century ago, most immigrants to the United States
came from Europe. Today, most come from Latin
America and Asia. Recently, immigrants from Asian
nations have begun to outnumber Hispanic
immigrants.
 THE CHANGING FACE OF
AMERICA.
- As a result of immigration, the ethnic makeup of the
United States is changing. Yet immigration is not the
only factor contributing to changes in the American
ethnic mosaic.
 UNAUTHORIZED
IMMIGRATION
- Illegal immigration—or unauthorized immigration, to
use the language of the Department of Homeland
Security—has been a major national issue for a long
time.
 POLITICAL
POLITICAL PARTICIPATION
PARTICIPATION
BY
BY LATINOS
LATINOS
- Latino political participation has increased in
recent years, and they have gained political
power in several states. Latinos do not vote at
the same rate as African Americans, in large part
because many Latinos are immigrants who are
not yet citizens.
 NATIONAL SECURITY
NATIONAL SECURITY AND
AND THE
THE
RIGHTS OF
RIGHTS OF IMMIGRANTS
IMMIGRANTS
- Legal immigrants who are not citizens have
certain rights. The Fourteenth Amendment states
that all persons (as opposed to all citizens) shall
enjoy “due process of law.” Illegal immigrants
are subject to deportation.
 LIMITS TO THE RIGHTS OF
DEPORTEES: DUE PROCESS
- Despite the Fourteenth Amendment, the courts
have often deferred to government assertions
that noncitizens cannot make constitutional
claims. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death
Penalty Act of 1996 was especially restrictive.
 LIMITS TO THE RIGHTS OF DEPORTEES:
FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION
- Despite the Fourteenth Amendment, the courts have often
deferred to government assertions that noncitizens cannot
make constitutional claims. The Antiterrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 was especially
restrictive. The government was given the right to deport
noncitizens for alleged terrorism without any court review
of the deportation order.
 LIMITS
LIMITS TO
TO THE
THE RIGHTS
RIGHTS OF
OF DEPORTEES:
DEPORTEES:
FREEDOM
FREEDOM OFOF ASSOCIATION
ASSOCIATION
- A 1999 case involved a group of noncitizens
associated with the Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine (PFLP). PFLP members had carried out
terrorist acts in Israel, but there was no evidence of
criminal conduct by the group arrested in the United
States.
 LIMITS TO THE RIGHTS OF
DEPORTEES: EX POST FACTO LAWS.
- As you learned earlier, the Constitution prohibits ex
post facto laws—laws that inflict punishments for acts
that were not illegal when they were committed. This
provision may not apply in deportation cases,
however. The 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death
Penalty Act, mentioned earlier, provided mandatory
deportation for noncitizens convicted of an aggravated
felony, even if the crime took place before 1996.
 THE AGONY OF THE AMERICAN
INDIAN
- Whether living on rural reservations or in urban
neighborhoods, American Indians have long
experienced high rates of poverty. There is much
history behind this problem. (In recent years, a
majority of American Indians have come to prefer
this description— or even, simply, Indian—to Native
American. Still, both terms are in use.)
 THE
THE DEMOGRAPHIC
DEMOGRAPHIC
COLLAPSE
COLLAPSE
- During the years after Columbus arrived in
America, native population numbers—both in the
future United States and in the Americas
generally—experienced one of the most
catastrophic collapses in human history. The
Europeans brought with them Old World diseases
to which Native Americans had no immunity.
 AMERICAN INDIANS IN THE NINETEENTH
AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES.
- In the United States, the American Indian
population continued to decrease through the
nineteenth century—a time when the European
American and African American populations
were experiencing explosive growth.
 WOMEN’S
STRUGGLE
FOR EQUAL
RIGHTS
 EARLY WOMEN’S POLITICAL
MOVEMENTS
- In 1848, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady
Stanton organized the first women’s rights
convention in Seneca Falls, New York. The
three hundred people who attended approved a
Declaration of Sentiments: “We hold these
truths to be self-evident: that all men and
women are created equal.”
 THE MODERN WOMEN’S
MOVEMENT
- Historian Nancy Cott contends that the word feminism first
began to be used around 1910. At that time feminism
meant, as it does today, political, social, and economic
equality for women—a radical notion that gained little
support then.
 THE EQUAL RIGHTS
AMENDMENT
- The initial focus of the modern women’s movement
was to eradicate gender inequality through a
constitutional amendment. The proposed Equal Rights
Amendment (ERA), which was first introduced I
Congress in 1923, states as follows: “Equality of
rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged
by the United States on by any state on account of
sex.”
 CHALLENGING GENDER
DISCRIMINATION IN THE COURTS
- When ratification of the ERA failed, women’s rights
organizations began a campaign to establish national
and state laws that would guarantee the equality of
women. This more limited campaign met with much
success.
 GENDER EQUALITY ON
CAMPUS
- Congress sought to guarantee equality of treatment in
education by passing Title IX of the Education
Amendments of 1972, which states: “No person in the
United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded
from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be
subjected to discrimination under any education
program or activity receiving Federal financial
assistance.”
 WOMEN IN THE MILITARY
- One of the most controversial issues involving women’s
rights has been the role of women in the armed forces.
Many believe that the ERA failed because of the fear
that women might be drafted (forced) into military
service Women do not face such a requirement. Been
the role of women in the armed forces. Many believe
that the ERA failed because of the fear that women
might be drafted (forced) into military service.
 WOMEN IN POLITICS TODAY
- the number of women holding congressional
seats has increased significantly in recent years
and example is In 2001, for the first time, a
woman was elected to a leadership post in
Congress—Nancy Pelosi of California became
the Democrats’ minority whip in the U.S. House
of Representatives.
 GENDER-BASED
GENDER-BASED
DISCRIMINATION IN THE WORKPLACE
- Traditional cultural beliefs concerning the
proper role of women in society continue to be
evident not only in the political arena but also
in the workplace. Since the 1960s, however,
women have gained substantial protection
against discrimination through laws that require
equal employment opportunities and equal pay.
 TITLE VII OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS
ACT OF 1964.
- Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits
gender discrimination in employment and has been
used to strike down employment policies that
discriminate against employees on the basis of
gender.
 SEXUAL HARASSMENT
- The United States Supreme Court has also held that
Title VII’s prohibition of gender-based discrimination
extends to sexual harassment in the workplace. One
form of sexual harassment occurs when job
opportunities, promotions, salary increases, and other
benefits are given in return for sexual favors
 WAGE DISCRIMINATION
- Although Title VII and other legislation since the
1960s have mandated equal employment
opportunities for men and women, women continue
to earn less, on average, than men do. The Equal Pay
Act, which was enacted in 1963, basically requires
employers to provide equal pay for substantially
equal work.
THE RIGHTS
THE RIGHTS
AND STATUS
AND STATUS OF
OF
GAY MALES
GAY MALES AND
AND
LESBIANS
LESBIANS
 GENERAL INFO

• The stigma attached to homosexuality and the resulting

fear of exposure had tended to prevent most gay men and
lesbians from engaging in activism. In the months after
Stonewall, however, the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay
Activist Alliance were formed, and similar groups sprang
up in other parts of the country
 GROWTH IN THE GAY MALE AND
LESBIAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT
- Since then, gay men and lesbians have formed
thousands of organizations to exert pressure on
legislatures, the media, schools, churches, and other
organizations to recognize their right to equal treatment.
To a great extent, lesbian and gay groups have
succeeded in changing public opinion— and state and
local laws that pertain to their status and rights.
 STATE AND LOCAL LAWS TARGETING
GAY MEN AND LESBIANS
- forty-nine states had sodomy laws that made
various kinds of sexual acts, including
homosexual acts, illegal (Illinois, which had
repealed its sodomy law in 1962, was the only
exception). During the 1970s and 1980s, about
half of these laws were either repealed or struck
down by the courts.
 LAWRENCE V.
LAWRENCE V. TEXAS
TEXAS
- The states—mostly in the South—that resisted
the movement to abolish sodomy laws received
a boost in 1986 with the Supreme Court’s
decision in Bowers v. Hardwick.21 In that case,
the Court upheld, by a five-to-four vote, a
Georgia law that made homosexual conduct
between two adults a crime.
 STATE ACTIONS
- Today, thirty-four states, the District of
Columbia, and more than 180 cities and
counties have enacted laws protecting lesbians
and gay men from discrimination in
employment in at least some workplaces
 “DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL”
- In 1993, however, President Bill Clinton announced a
new policy, described as “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
Enlistees would not be asked about their sexual
orientation, and gay men and lesbians would be
allowed to serve in the military so long as they did
not declare that they were gay men or lesbians or
commit homosexual acts.
 SAME-SEX MARRIAGE
- In 2015, however, the Supreme Court endorsed
nationwide recognition of same sex marriage. This
landmark decision was part of one of the most rapid
and profound extensions of civil rights in history—
the recognition of equal rights regardless of sexual
orientation.
 THE DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE ACT
(DOMA).
- Controversy over this issue first flared up in 1993
when the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that denying
marriage licenses to gay couples might violate the
equal protection clause of the Hawaii constitution.
 RECOGNITION OF SAME-SEX
MARRIAGES
- Massachusetts was the first state to recognize gay
marriage. In November 2003, the Massachusetts
Supreme Judicial Court ruled that same-sex couples
have a right to civil marriage under the Massachusetts
state constitution. 25 For four years, Massachusetts
stood alone in approving such marriages.
 THE RIGHTS OF TRANSGENDER
INDIVIDUALS
- Forty-six states allow birth certificates to be
amended to change a person’s recorded sex.
Twenty-eight states, however, allow such a change
only following surgery. Discrimination against
transgender individuals is widespread, and in
recent years, such persons have increasingly come
out into the open and demanded equal rights.
 SUMMARY
Before the Civil War, slavery was
protected by the Constitution.
Constitutional amendments
after the Civil War ended
slavery, and African Americans
gained citizenship, the right to
vote, and other rights. This
protection was largely a dead
letter by the 1880s, however.
Segregation was declared
unconstitutional by the Supreme
Court in Brown v. Board of
Education of Topeka (1954), in
which the Court stated that
separation implied inferiority. In
1955, the modern civil rights
movement began. The Civil
Rights Act of 1964 bans
discrimination in employment
and public accommodations on
the basis of race, color, religion,
gender, or national origin. The
Voting Rights Act of 1965
outlawed discriminatory voter-
registration tests and authorized
federal voter registration.
 SUMMARY
The Supreme Court uses various
standards when assessing the
constitutionality of laws and
government actions. Strict
scrutiny applies to basic civil
liberties and to the rights of
racial, religious, and ethnic
minorities. Intermediate, or
exacting, scrutiny is used to
consider claims of
discrimination against women.
Rational basis review is the
easiest standard for the
government to meet, but it has
been
used to protect gay men and
lesbians. Affirmative action
programs are controversial
because they could lead to
reverse discrimination against
majority groups or even other
minority groups. Supreme Court
decisions have limited
affirmative action programs,
and several states now ban
state-sponsored affirmative
action.
 SUMMARY
Today, most immigrants come from civil rights. Uniquely among
Asia and Latin America, minority groups, American
especially Mexico. Many are Indians experienced
unauthorized (or illegal) demographic collapse upon the
immigrants. Most came to find arrival of the Europeans in the
jobs, but their status is a major New World. They continue to
political issue. The percentage face high levels of poverty.
of Latinos, or Hispanic
Americans, in the population is
growing rapidly. While Latinos
who are citizens benefit from the
same antidiscrimination
protections as African
Americans, immigrants who are
not citizens have few
 SUMMARY
In 2003, a Supreme Court decision marriage. Recently, the rights of
effectively invalidated all transgender persons have
remaining sodomy laws which become a major issue.
criminalized specific sexual
practices. Many states, cities,
and counties now have laws
prohibiting at least some types
of discrimination based on
sexual orientation. Gay men and
lesbians gained the right to
serve openly in the military in
2011. In 2015, the Supreme
Court established a
constitutional right to same-sex