Civil Rights Acts of 1866-1875
The Civil Rights Acts of 1866-1875 were a series of significant legislative measures aimed at establishing and protecting the civil rights of African Americans following the abolition of slavery in the United States. These acts emerged in response to the discriminatory black codes enacted by southern states, which sought to restrict the rights of freed blacks. The first of these acts, passed in 1866, granted citizenship to African Americans and enumerated various rights, including the ability to enter contracts and seek legal redress.
Subsequent acts expanded federal authority to enforce these rights, particularly during the Reconstruction era, and included measures to combat violent opposition from groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Notably, the Civil Rights Act of 1875 sought to eliminate racial discrimination in public accommodations and jury participation. However, many of these laws faced challenges in the Supreme Court, which limited their effectiveness. While the Civil Rights Acts of this period did not achieve lasting equality, they laid important groundwork for future civil rights movements, influencing legislation and legal interpretations well into the 20th century.
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Civil Rights Acts of 1866-1875
After the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery throughout the United States in 1865, almost all freed blacks were without property or education, and most white southerners bitterly opposed any fundamental improvement in their political and social status. In 1865–66, southern legislatures enacted the highly discriminatory black codes, and proponents of racial equality responded by calling for new federal laws.
Congress, using its new authority under the Thirteenth Amendment, overrode President Andrew Johnson’s veto to pass the first Civil Rights Act on April 9, 1866. This law conferred citizenship on African Americans, a measure necessitated by the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision (Scott v. Sandford, 1857). The law included a list of enumerated rights, including the right to make and enforce contracts, to sue and give evidence in court, and to purchase and inherit all forms of property. It also punished public officials if they used their legal powers to deny equality to blacks. Since the law’s constitutionality was questionable, many of its major provisions were incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment.
On July 16, 1866, Congress again overrode President Johnson’s veto, this time to enlarge the scope of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Among other items, this law authorized the bureau to use military commissions to try persons accused of violating the civil rights of freedmen.
Again voting to override a presidential veto on March 2, 1867, Congress passed the First Reconstruction Act. Dividing the South into five military districts, the act required southern states to call new constitutional conventions elected by universal manhood suffrage and to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. Under the act, 703,000 blacks and 627,000 whites were registered as voters, with black majorities in five states.
As the Ku Klux Klan conducted a wave of terrorism against African Americans and Republicans in the South, Congress responded with the Ku Klux Klan Acts of 1870 and 1871, which provided police protection to enforce the rights guaranteed in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. In several decisions, such as United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the Supreme Court ruled that key parts of the statutes exceeded the constitutional powers of Congress.
Finally, on March 1, 1875, President Ulysses S. Grant signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1875. This far-reaching act, largely the work of Senator Charles Sumner, outlawed discrimination based on race in public accommodations (inns, businesses, theaters, and the like) and made it illegal to exclude blacks from jury trials. In the Civil Rights cases (1883), however, the Supreme Court struck down most of the 1875 law, holding that the Fourteenth Amendment did not authorize Congress to prohibit discrimination by private individuals. This decision ended almost all federal attempts to protect African Americans from private discrimination until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Although the Civil Rights Acts of the Reconstruction era failed to guarantee any long-lasting equality for blacks, they did provide points of reference for the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was resurrected in Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Company (1968), when the Supreme Court upheld its use to outlaw private racial discrimination in economic transactions as a “badge of slavery.”
Bibliography
Chong, Dennis. Collective Action and the Civil Rights Movement. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2014. Print.
Eagles, Charles W., ed. The Civil Rights Movement in America. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2014. Print.
Emberton, Carole. Beyond Redemption: Race, Violence, and the American South After the Civil War. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2013. Print.
Verney, Kevern. Black Civil Rights in America. New York: Routledge, 2012. Print.
Williams, Juan. Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965. New York: Penguin, 2013. Print.