Civil Rights in America

A Handbook of Legal History

Daniel H McLinden

• Publisher: Universal-Publishers
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781627343275
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Civil Rights in Law
• Index: Law

Here American history and American law merge into one. Key historical events and landmark legal cases fill the pages of this book. American ideals of "All men are created equal" and "Equal justice under law" run headlong into white supremacy and gender i

CHAPTER 1

Overview

General Statement

The needle of America’s moral compass has landed on good, evil and everything in between. Slavery made a mockery of the American ideals set out in the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution.

American courts trampled on civil rights for one hundred fifty years. Then things began to change midway through the 20th century.

“All men are created equal” (Declaration of Independence 1776) did not count slaves as men and “Equal protection of the law” (14th Amendment 1868) was interpreted by the US Supreme Court to prevent states—but not their White citizens—from discriminating against Blacks.

Civil rights is a struggle. Here is a broad look at it.

Introduction

America is called “the great melting pot”—a land of opportunity—a nation of immigrants—with its prime resource—its people—the most diverse on earth.

Whites came to America for better lives. Blacks came in chains in cargo holds in slave ships.

Whites took land from Native Americans through double-dealing and military offensives.

To complete expansion westward the United States made war on Mexico.

While the Civil War led to deconstruction of the South and an end to slavery, reconstruction did not lead to racial equality.

Civil Rights

Civil rights are defined as the rights of citizens to political and social freedom and equality—the opposite of slavery and human degradation.

The American ideal for civil rights evolved in law from slavery to personal freedom and equal treatment under the law, i.e., freedom from governmental interference in a person’s opinions, religious practices, beliefs, and private matters; and, equal treatment of persons regardless of their race, color, ethnicity, national origin, religious beliefs, sex (gender) or sexual orientation.

It took a bloody civil war over slavery to trigger the ideal of equal treatment under the law for Whites and non-Whites embodied in the 14th Amendment (1868).

But court decisions on the 14th Amendment narrowed it to apply to wrongful state action only, not state inaction or wrongful private action. These decisions fostered racial discrimination and led to more segregation laws.

The intended effect of the 14th amendment—racial equality and integration—went dormant for decades until the 1950s when the door opened for court challenges and rulings. Today change continues toward racial equality, gender equality, personal privacy, same sex marriage and sexual orientation.

History

For seventy-six years (1789 to 1865) Whites had rights under the US Constitution (the supreme law of the land) but people of color did not. The Constitution, by ignoring slavery, left the issue of slavery to the States. State sovereignty gave states the power to decide to have slavery or not.

Northern states with small Black populations became free states. Southern states with agrarian economies built on slave labor became slave states.

The territorial footprint of the United States expanded in the 1800s from the Atlantic to the Pacific. White settlers took over Indian and Mexican lands. New states came into the Union. “Manifest Destiny” they called it—America’s self-proclaimed divine right to seize all territory from coast to coast.

With expansion, Northerners wanted to add free states to the Union; Southerners, slave states. The country was deeply divided over the slavery issue.

Missouri Compromise (1820)

The US Constitution (written in 1787 and ratified in 1789) was completely silent as to slavery. It did not use the word “slave” or “slavery” and merely referred to slaves as “other Persons” (i.e., in contrast to “free Persons” or “Indians”) in a math formula for apportionment of direct taxes and congressional representation.

There was no discussion of the concept of slavery nor any argument for or against it in the Constitution.

It fell on each (sovereign) State to allow slavery or not.

In 1820 Congress passed a law called the Missouri Compromise. The compromise was to allow Missouri to come into the Union as a slave state in exchange for Maine coming in as a free state. All other lands north of Missouri’s southern border at 36 degrees 30 minutes latitude—if, and when they became states—would come in as free states.

At that time lands to the north and south of the line were mainly Spanish territory—soon to become part of Mexico when it gained its independence from Spain (1821) the next year.

Within fifteen years (1836) Whites went to Mexican territory (Texas) and fought and formed a republic over its eastern half; Whites went to California and fought and formed a republic there (1846); and, President Polk solidified the United States’ western territorial expansion with the Mexican American War (1846–1848) taking from Mexico a vast area of land (in addition to Texas and California) that is now all or part of Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, and Arizona.

Despite provisions of the treaty ending the war, Whites did not treat Mexicans in those areas as equals. Over time Mexican Americans were relegated to menial positions and inferior (segregated) schools. (Better education since the 1940s has helped Mexican Americans evolve politically and economically.)

Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)

In 1854 Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act overturning the Missouri Compromise to the extent Kansas and Nebraska—located on land designated “free” by the Missouri Compromise—would not come in as free states pursuant to the Missouri Compromise—but would hold elections on the question whether they would declare themselves free or slave states—so-called popular sovereignty.

Dred Scott Decision (1857)

In 1857 the United States Supreme Court decided the Dred Scott case. The Court held Dred Scott, a slave, did not have standing to sue for his freedom because the US Constitution gave him no rights. He was not a person under the Constitution rather property (of a White person). According to the Court, Scott’s presence or residence in a free state or territory was not enough to establish his freedom.

In that year (1857) the people of the United States were at odds over the question of slavery and the outcome of the Dred Scott case. Abolitionists deplored the Court decision. And it, along with the national debate over the extension of slavery into new territories, laid the groundwork for civil war.

Civil War (1861–1865)

The political divide over slavery led to a new political party (Republican) against slavery expansion. Its candidate for President, Abraham Lincoln, won the vote in 1860. He did not stress ending slavery but only ending its expansion into new territories. After he was elected, southern states withdrew (seceded) from the Union.

This triggered the Civil War (1861 to 1865) between the northern states that stayed in the Union and fought to preserve it, and the southern states that left it to form their own alliance called the Confederate States of America.

The death toll in the Civil War was 655,000.

In 1865 the Confederacy lost the Civil War and surrendered to the Union, Lincoln was assassinated only days later, and the 13th Amendment was ratified ending slavery.

Southern revisionists have attempted to rewrite history by falsely claiming the war was fought for states’ rights—when in fact it was clearly over slavery.

Civil War Amendments to the Constitution aka Reconstruction Amendments

Three amendments came out of the Civil War. They were designed to protect individuals from governmental interference and to recognize basic human rights—the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments.

The 13th abolished slavery and involuntary servitude.

The 14th applied 5th Amendment due process requirements to states and gave equal protection under the law. Every person, White or non-White, was to get equal treatment under the law. Despite this constitutional mandate the amendment’s aims were subverted by the courts for nearly a century and some states’ efforts to disadvantage people of color and other groups continue today.

The 15th gave freed Black men the right to vote. (It would take another 50 years (1920) and the 19th Amendment for women to get it.)

Reconstruction (1865–1877)

In 1863 Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves and he initiated a plan in very small measure to export freed slaves to Africa and Central America. He also invited Black soldiers into the Union Army.

Frederick Douglass, a runaway and emancipated slave, was the most well-known Black of his day—writer, orator, journalist, religious abolitionist and forward thinker (also standing for women’s rights). He counseled Lincoln, participated in the Underground Railroad, worked for Black recruitment in the Union Army, rebuffed Lincoln’s “back to Africa” idea, but believed Lincoln was deep down a true abolitionist.

Lincoln did not live for the Reconstruction era (1865 to 1877). The Reconstruction Act passed over presidential veto (Andrew Johnson) in 1867. It was a time to rebuild the South—thoroughly devastated by war after the Union Army’s scorched earth policy—and put Blacks on par with Whites.

Blacks voted and gained political and economic power. But long denied educations, few could read or write. Efforts to school Blacks got underway. Northerners poured into the South, some to help with schooling but most to profit from reconstruction. Southerners derided their opportunism—calling them carpetbaggers (since the luggage they came with was made of carpeting material)—and they called their Southern collaborators, scalawags (a term first meaning a farm animal of little value then a worthless person).

At every turn the South resisted putting Blacks on equal footing with Whites.

Paramilitary groups, mainly southern Civil War veterans, set fires to Black neighborhoods, kidnapped, lynched and murdered Blacks, and intimidated Black voters, Black politicians and White sympathizers. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was formed in Tennessee, the Redshirts in Mississippi and the White League in Louisiana.

Congress passed legislation in 1870 known as the Ku Klux Klan Act to protect freedmen’s right to vote, hold office, serve on juries, and get equal protection under the law. The act was strengthened in 1871 to empower the President (Grant) to declare martial law, impose heavy penalties against terrorist organizations and use military force to put down the KKK and other white supremacists.

Grant mainly succeeded but the Redshirts of Mississippi extended their influence to South Carolina and North Carolina. And on voting days Redshirts on horseback brandished weapons and threatened and intimidated Blacks and other Republican voters.

Reconstruction failed.

The Ku Klux Klan drifted into the shadows but reemerged throughout the South and other pockets of the country after the 1915 film “The Birth of a Nation” vilifying Blacks and glorifying the Confederacy and the Klan....

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Chapter 1: Overview
• Chapter 2: Courts, Slavery and Discrimination
• Chapter 3: Nearly Twenty Years After The Civil War and No Equality for Blacks
• Chapter 4: Inequality–“Separate but Equal”–Segregation–Exclusion v. Equality–Integration—Inclusion
• Chapter 5: Targeting Blacks and Asians
• Chapter 6: Unequal Schools and Restrictive Covenants
• Chapter 7: Separate but Equal
• Chapter 8: Desegregation
• Chapter 9: Privacy
• Chapter 10: The Commerce Clause
• Chapter 11: Privacy and Sex
• Chapter 12: Discrimination
• Chapter 13: Abortion
• Chapter 14: (Gender) Sex Equality
• Chapter 15: Burning the Flag, Sexual Orientation, and Voting
• Chapter 16: Native Americans and DACA
• Conclusion