Civil Rights Legislation

Civil Rights Legislation. America's first civil rights legislation came during Reconstruction. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments extended citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, granted all citizens equal protection of the laws, and outlawed the denial of citizens' rights on the basis of race. Empowered by these amendments, Congress passed a civil rights act in 1870 providing remedies against state officials who violated citizens' constitutional rights, and another in 1875 requiring equal treatment of all in places of public accommodation. The Supreme Court interpreted the 1870 act narrowly, however, and in the Civil Rights Cases (1883) held the 1875 act unconstitutional, ruling that Congress's power did not extend to cases of private discrimination.

More than eighty years would pass before Congress again addressed the issue of civil rights. As African Americans became part of the New Deal coalition, they increasingly pressed for more effective civil rights legislation, but southern white politicians blocked all such bills until the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Prodded by northern Republicans, the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration proposed a civil rights bill designed in part to divide the Democratic party's liberal and southern wings. Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson, viewing the bill as a vehicle for his presidential ambitions, maneuvered to get a watered‐down version enacted. The act created a Civil Rights Commission to investigate and report on civil rights issues and set up a cumbersome method of enforcing federal voting‐rights guarantees. A modest extension of the act in 1960 did not increase its effectiveness.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, by contrast, inaugurated a new era of civil rights legislation. John F. Kennedy had made civil rights an issue during his presidential campaign, but as president he was reluctant to expend substantial political capital on the issue. His successor, Lyndon Johnson, however, forcefully pushed a comprehensive civil rights bill and used his influence to break a Senate filibuster. The act's major provisions banned racial discrimination in public accommodations and prohibited discrimination by employers and unions. The act also authorized the federal government to deny public funds to segregated schools.

The Supreme Court ruled the 1964 act constitutional, finding that Congress could use its power to regulate interstate commerce to ban racial discrimination. Desegregation of many restaurants and hotels followed quickly. The threatened loss of federal funding sped the pace of school desegregation.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 dramatically expanded federal power over voting, invalidating literacy tests and other practices used to exclude African Americans from the franchise. It also required southern cities and states, and some northern ones, to secure permission from the Justice Department or a federal court for changes in their voter‐registration laws. The 1965 act dramatically expanded the numbers of African American voters. Originally in effect for a limited period, it was regularly extended and eventually made permanent. Under the act, some states created race‐based electoral districts designed to increase blacks' legislative representation—a practice that became intensely controversial in the 1990s.

The Civil Rights Act of 1968 banned race discrimination in housing, including renting. To prevent acts of violence against civil rights advocates, the act also expanded federal laws making interference with a citizen's civil rights a federal crime. And, responding to urban upheavals, the act made it a federal crime to cross state lines to incite a riot.

As the political climate became more conservative after 1970, the Supreme Court became increasingly skeptical of expansive applications of civil rights legislation. A series of decisions in the late 1980s narrowing the scope of civil rights laws provoked counter efforts in Congress to extend the laws' scope. President George Bush vetoed a civil rights bill in 1990, asserting that it permitted racial quotas in hiring to increase minority representation in business and education. Extended negotiations produced a bill with some cosmetic changes, which Bush then signed as the Civil Rights Act of 1991.

By the 1980s, a comprehensive set of civil rights laws was in place, producing a general culture of civil rights. The 1964 Civil Rights Act included a provision, long sought by women's rights advocates, outlawing employment discrimination on the basis of sex. Later statutes applied the nondiscrimination principle to older citizens (the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, 1967) and the handicapped (the Americans with Disabilities Act, 1990). Although proposals to extend the principle to homosexuals stirred controversy, the civil rights culture had transformed the embattled proponents of minority rights into powerful interest groups capable of placing their concerns at the center of public debate.
See also Affirmative Action; Civil Rights; Civil Rights Movement; Gay and Lesbian Rights Movement; New Deal Era, The; Segregation, Racial; Sixties, The; Women's Rights Movements.

Bibliography

Robert F. Burk , The Eisenhower Administration and Black Civil Rights, 1985.
Hugh Davis Graham , The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy, 1990.
Mark Stern , Calculating Visions: Kennedy, Johnson, and Civil Rights, 1992.
Robert Mann , The Walls of Jericho: Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Russell, and the Struggle for Civil Rights, 1996.

Mark Tushnet