Civil Rights

1. Civil Rights

2. Civil Rights Although the Declaration of Independence declared that “All men are created equal,” the 1787 Constitution had little to say about equality, at least as the concept is understood today. Definition: Civil rights are rights related to the duties of citizenship and the opportunities for participation in civic life that the government is obliged to protect. -They are based on the expectation of equality under the law. Civil Rights

3. Civil Rights vs. Civil Liberties Although the government is the only authority that could suppress liberties (suppressing freedom of speech or forbidding a certain religious belief), both government and individuals have the capacity to engage in discriminationby treating people unequally ; thus violating civil rights. Civil Rights

4. The Government and Civil Rights The government can take three different roles when it comes to civil rights. • It can engage in state-sponsored or public discrimination by actively discriminating against people. • It can treat people equally, but permit private discrimination by allowing individuals or businesses to discriminate. • It can try both to treat people equally and to prevent individuals or businesses from discriminating. Civil Rights

5. The Constitution and Civil Rights (Cont’d) The Founders  were not much concerned with equality as it is understood today.   • Many owned slaves. • The words slave and slavery do not appear in the Constitution, but states were required to return runaway slaves and the importation of slavery was allowed until 1808. • The states had authority over voting, and most states restricted the right to vote to free males with a certain amount of property. Civil Rights

6. Introducing Civil Rights into the Constitution Civil War Amendments • Thirteenth Amendment • Ended Slavery • Fourteenth Amendment • Makes people born in the United States citizens • Equal protection under the law • Fifteenth Amendment • Universal adult male suffrage • Nineteenth Amendment • Woman’s suffrage • Twenty-Sixth Amendment • Universal adult suffrage Civil Rights

7. Racial Segregation and Discrimination Civil Rights

8. Legal Restrictions on Civil Rights Slavery • Missouri Compromise (1820) • Banned slavery in the territories north of the southern border of Missouri, thus keeping most of the vast lands in the Louisiana Purchase free • Compromise of 1850 • Allowed territories captured in the Mexican War to decide for themselves whether to be free or slave and denied alleged fugitive slaves the right to a jury trial Civil Rights

9. Legal Restrictions on Civil Rights (Cont’d) • Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) • Reversed the Missouri Compromise by allowing each territory to vote as to whether to allow slavery or not • Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) • No black—slave or free—could be an American citizen, and thus could not sue in a federal court. • Blacks were “beings of an inferior order” who had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” • The Declaration’s statement that “all men are created equal” did not include those of African heritage. Civil Rights

10. Legal Restrictions on Civil Rights (Cont’d) In 1846 Dred Scott, a black slave pictured here with his family, sued for his freedom, claiming that as his owner had taken him to a free territory, he should be free. The Supreme Court said no, and went further to say that Scott, as an African American, had no standing to sue, and that Congress could not prohibit slavery in any territory. The 1857 ruling pleased southerners but infuriated northerners. Civil Rights

11. Racial Segregation and Discrimination The Emancipation Proclamation did not end discrimination. • Black Codes • Prevented freedmen from voting, owning land, or leaving their plantations • Reconstruction • Civil Rights Act of 1866 guaranteed the right of freedmen to make contracts, sue in court if those contracts were violated, and own property. • Congress also established military rule over the former Confederate states. This would end when a state passed a new state constitution that guaranteed black suffrage and when it ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. Civil Rights

12. Ku Klux Klan Founded by Confederate veterans in 1866, the Klan was a terrorist organization aimed at restoring white supremacy. • Congress responded by passing: • Civil Rights Act of 1871  • Enforced Fourteenth Amendment  • Provided protection from Klan violence • Civil Rights Act of 1875 • Provided equality in public accommodation  • All declared unconstitutional by Supreme Court Civil Rights

13. After Reconstruction Reconstruction ended in 1876 and the South was no longer under military occupation. • Mississippi never ratified the Thirteenth Amendment. (They finally ratify the Thirteenth Amendment in 1995.) • Klan violence increased and the presence of the Klan was evident in private and government agencies throughout the South and even in some Northern states like Indiana. Civil Rights

14. Denial of Rights by the States Despite the Fifteenth Amendment, states denied freedmen the right to vote through a variety of laws. • Poll taxes limited the voting of poor blacks (as well as poor whites). • The white primary excluded blacks from Democratic primaries. This meant blacks had no effective vote because the winner of the primary in Southern States won the general election. • Literacy tests involved reading and interpreting difficult passages, sometimes in foreign languages. • Grandfather clauses gave exemptions to those whose grandfathers had been eligible to vote. Civil Rights

15. Jim Crow Jim Crow laws enforced segregation of whites and blacks in all public places. • Plessey v. Ferguson (1896) • The separate but equal doctrine held that states could segregate the races without violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as long as the separate facilities were equal. • Southern States • Not only were schools, libraries, and other public institutions segregated, but the southern states required segregation of restaurants, inns, and other places of public accommodation. • Northern States • African Americans often experienced discrimination in hiring, housing, hotels, and restaurants, though segregation was not enforced by law. Civil Rights

16. Woman’s Suffrage Neither the Declaration nor the Constitution made any provision for women’s rights. Rather, the states continued the English policy of coverture. • In 1848, leaders of the women’s suffrage movement met in Seneca Falls, New York, to organize for the right to vote. • The Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution would not be passed until 1920. Civil Rights

17. Woman’s Suffrage by States, 1890—1919 Civil Rights

18. Women’s Rights Even after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, women found themselves restricted by law and discriminated against in a variety of areas. • Right to own property • Right to divorce • Access to birth control and abortion • Right to equal access to higher education • Right to equal work and equal pay Civil Rights

19. Equal Rights Amendment Introduced in 1921 by Alice Paul and passed by Congress in 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) said: “Equality of Rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex.” • Three-fourth of states did not ratify it. Civil Rights

20. Equal Rights Amendment (Cont’) Civil Rights

21. Other Forms of Discrimination • Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 • Barred immigration of Chinese to America • Public segregation of Hispanics in the south and west • Exclusion of Native Americans as citizens (ends with the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 ) • In 1823, the Supreme Court declared that Native Americans were merely inhabitants, “an inferior race of people, without the privileges of citizens.” • Immigration Quotas • The Immigration Act of 1924 placed quotas for ethnic groups based on the proportion of Americans from each nationality resident in 1890, thereby severely limiting the number of whites considered to be of “lower race;” that is, those from southern and eastern Europe. • Japanese Interment during World Ward II • In Korematsu v. United States (1944) the Supreme Court decision upholding the detention of Japanese Americans during World War II. Civil Rights

22. Other Forms of Discrimination (Cont’d) Civil Rights

23. The End of Legal Restrictions on Civil Rights Brown v. Board of Education (1954) • Separate schools were inherently unequal. • Segregation in schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Brown II (1955) • The oversight of desegregation was given to Federal Courts, taking the power away from the states. Civil Rights

24. End of Civil Rights Restrictions Civil Rights Act of 1957  • Established the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to investigate civil rights violations • Created Civil Rights division in the Department of Justice to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment  Civil Rights Act of 1960  • Renewal of 1957 act  • Created criminal laws against racially motivated bombings and burnings Civil Rights

25. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 Civil Rights Act of 1964 • Eleven titles  • The most important are II, VI, and VII. • Title II bars discrimination in places of public accommodation. • Title VI bars racial discrimination in any federally funded program. • Title VII bars discrimination in hiring; firing; or any other discrimination by business or labor organizations on account of race, religion, sex or national origins; outlawed poll taxes and literacy tests; and created the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC). Civil Rights

26. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 The Voting Rights Act of the 1965 • This Act banned literacy, interpretation, and other such tests for voting. • It required states with low voter registration levels to receive Justice Department approval for any changes to its voting laws. • It also established new criminal penalties for those who sought to keep people from voting on account of race. Civil Rights

27. White and Black Southern Voter Registration, 1952—1984 Civil Rights

28. Ending Anti-Miscegenation Laws Miscegenation laws banned the marriage of and sometimes sexual relations between couples of different races. • Loving v. Virginia (1967) • The Court ended miscegenation laws finding no compelling interest in a law that prohibited interracial marriage. Civil Rights

29. Sexual Identity • The Stonewall riots were street protests by gay patrons against a police raid at a gay bar in New York. • The riots launched the gay rights movement. • Activists soon formed the Gay Liberation Front that established branch organizations around the world. • Many states passed laws that specifically targeted gay sex. • Bowers v. Hardwick (1986)    • The Supreme Court ruled in 1986 that homosexual activity was not a fundamental right, so states could still keep such activity illegal if they so chose. • Lawrence v. Texas (2003) • The Supreme Court reversed the 1986 decision and declared that states could not prohibit sexual activity between people of the same sex. Civil Rights

30. Sexual Identity and the Loss of Civil Rights Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell • Prior to this policy, simply being a gay or lesbian citizen, without any evidence of homosexual activities, was sufficient grounds for discharge from the military. • Under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, sexual identity alone is not a ground for discharge, but lesbians, gays, or bisexuals can still be discharged for engaging in homosexual relationships or for discussing their sexual orientation. • It is estimated that over 15,000 servicemen and servicewomen have been discharged under this policy. Some serve in strategic positions, like languages, where the military already faces a shortage. Civil Rights

31. The Right to Marry In 1996, Congress passed and President Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act that defines marriage, for the purpose of federal law, as between a man and a woman and declares that states do not have to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. Civil Rights

32. States Approving Same-Sex Marriage, 2010 Civil Rights

33. Changing Views on Same-Sex Marriage, 2006–2009 Civil Rights

34. Affirmative Action Even after the passage of Civil Rights laws, minorities and women continued to face discrimination in hiring and in access to educational institutions. • Affirmative action is a term coined in the 1960s to describe programs that were intended to remove “artificial barriers” to employment and education for people who had been historically prevented access because of discrimination. • Seek out and hire/admit qualified minority and female candidates Civil Rights

35. Affirmative Action vs. Quotas The Supreme Court has consistently held that quotas are unconstitutional while upholding affirmative action programs. • Businesses that are required to employ a certain number of women or minorities can avoid the requirements if they can show that there was a shortage of reasonably qualified female or minority applicants. • Colleges and universities cannot set aside a number or percentage of seats for minority or female candidates, but may use race as one of many factors in admissions. Civil Rights

36. Disability Rights The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) (1990) requires public and private employers to make “reasonable accommodations” to known physical and mental limitations of employees with disabilities. • To comply with the act, public transportation authorities have made buses and trains accessible to those in wheelchairs. • Public accommodations, such as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, and doctors’ offices must also meet ADA accessibility standards, within reason removing barriers from existing structures. Civil Rights

37. Racial and Religious Profiling Using racial, ethnic, or religious characteristics in determining whom to investigate for particular kinds of crimes, has become controversial because evidence has mounted that profiling entails unequal treatment under the law. • State and federal courts have specifically prohibited the use of race as a factor in “drug courier profiles.” Civil Rights

38. Illegal Immigrants The Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause prohibits states from denying to any person—in other words, not just citizens—equal protection under the law. • Immigration Reform • Path to legal citizenship • Increases in guest worker visas • Plyler v. Doe (1982) • The Supreme Court has held that states may not deny public education to illegal immigrants. • Federal law requires hospitals to provide emergency care to illegal immigrants through Medicaid. Civil Rights

39. Illegal Immigrants (Cont’d) Civil Rights

40. Sexual Harassment The problem of discrimination on account of sex can take many forms, and one of the most prevalent in the workplace is sexual harassment. • Survey data reveal that nearly 60 percent of women report potentially harassing behaviors at work. • The Supreme Court recognizes two distinct types of sexual harassment. • Quid pro quo, where supervisors link the benefits of employment to sexual favors • Whenever one or more employees establish, on account of sex, a hostile work environment, or one that interferes with a worker’s ability to do his or her job. Civil Rights

41. Gender Equality in the Workplace Unfortunately, true pay equity has not been achieved in the American workplace. • Census statistics from 2008 show that, in 2007, women earned only 77.8 percent of what men earned. • African-American women earned only 68.7 percent, and Latinas earned only 59 percent, of what men made. Civil Rights

42. Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. (2007) • The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Goodyear, stating that Ledbetter’s claims alleging forms of sex discrimination were time-barred because the discriminatory decisions relating to pay had been made more than 180 days prior to the day she filed the charge with the EEOC. Civil Rights

43. Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (Cont’d) Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. • In 2009 Congress reversed the court ruling by passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which President Obama signed into law. • - The act restarts the clock each time an employee receives a paycheck that has been compromised by discriminatory practices. http://edlabor.house.gov/lilly-ledbetter-fair-pay-act/index.shtml Civil Rights

44. Focus Questions • What is the meaning of equality? How has its meaning changed since the Constitution was written in 1787? • What role has government played with regard to equality in the past? What role does it assume today? • What means have various groups used to secure their civil rights? What means has government used to respond? • What is the effect on a democracy if some of its people lack civil rights? • Are civil rights a gate, or a gateway, to democracy? Explain. Civil Rights