Chapter 5 Civil Rights

Forbade discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, and national origin. The major provisions of the act were as follows:
It outlawed arbitrary discrimination in voter registration.
It barred discrimination in public accommodations, such as hotels and restaurants, whose operations affect interstate commerce.
It authorized the federal government to sue to desegregate public schools and facilities
.It expanded the power of the Civil Rights Commission and extended its life.It provided for the withholding of federal funds from programs administered in a discriminatory manner.
It established the right to equality of opportunity in employment.

Plessy went to court, claiming that such a statute was contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause. In 1896, the United States Supreme Court rejected Plessy's contention. The Court concluded that the Fourteenth Amendment “could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social& equality.” The Court stated that segregation alone did not violate the Constitution: “Laws permitting, and even requiring, their separation in places where they are liable to be brought into contact do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other.”4
With this case, the Court announced the separate-but-equal doctrine .
Plessy v. Ferguson became the judicial cornerstone of racial discrimination throughout the United States. Even though Plessy upheld segregated facilities in railway cars only, it was assumed that the Supreme Court was upholding segregation everywhere as long as the separate facilities were equal, which in reality meant as long as there were separate facilities. The result was a system of racial segregation, particularly in the South—supported by laws collectively known as Jim Crow laws—that required separate drinking fountains; separate seats in theaters, restaurants, and hotels; separate public toilets; and separate waiting rooms for the two races. “Separate” was indeed the rule, but “equal” was never enforced, nor was it a reality.

Y 1950, the Supreme Court had ruled that African Americans who were admitted to a state university could not be assigned to separate sections of classrooms, libraries, and cafeterias. In 1951, Oliver Brown attempted to enroll his eight-year-old daughter, Linda Carol Brown, in the third grade of his all-white neighborhood school seven blocks from their home rather than travel by bus to the segregated school across town. Although Kansas law did not require schools to be segregated by race, in practice there were separate schools for white and black children. When Linda was denied admission to the all-white school, the Topeka NAACP urged Brown to join a lawsuit against the Topeka Board of Education .
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Brown v . Board of Education of Topeka6
established that segregation of races in the public schools violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendmen

Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC ). King advocated nonviolent civil disobedience as a means to achieve racial justice. King's philosophy of civil disobedience was influenced, in part, by the life and teachings of Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948). Gandhi had led resistance to the British colonial system in India from The following year, in 1957, King formed the Southern 1919 to 1947. He used tactics such as demonstrations and marches, as well as nonviolent, public disobedience to unjust laws. King's followers successfully used these methods to gain wider public acceptance of their cause.

Malcolm Little (who became Malcolm X when he joined the Black Muslims in 1952) and other leaders in the black power movement believed that African Americans fell into two groups: the “Uncle Toms,” who peaceably accommodated the white establishment, and the “New Negroes,” who took pride in their color and culture and who preferred and demanded racial separation as well as power. Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965, but he became an important reference point for a new generation of African Americans and a symbol of African American identity.Malcolm X —A 1992 film, directed by Spike Lee and starring Denzel Washington, that depicts the life of the controversial “black power” leader Malcolm X . Malcolm X , who was assassinated on February 21, 1965, clearly had a different vision from that of Martin Luther King, Jr., regarding how to achieve civil rights, respect, and equality for black Americans.

In the early history of the United States, women were considered citizens, but by and large they had no political rights because they were largely viewed as dependents. After the first women's rights convention in 1848, the campaign for suffrage gained momentum, yet not until 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, did women finally obtain the right to vote. The second wave of the women's movement began in the 1960s alongside the civil rights and anti–Vietnam War movements. The National Organization for Women (NOW) was formed in 1966 to bring about complete equality for women in all walks of life. Efforts to secure the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment failed, but the women's movement has been successful in obtaining new laws, changes in social customs, and increased political representation of women.

Women's rights organizations challenged discriminatory statutes and policies in the federal courts, contending that gender discrimination violated the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause. Since the 1970s, the Supreme Court has tended to scrutinize gender classifications closely and has invalidated a number of such statutes and policies. For example, in 1977, the Court held that police and firefighting units cannot establish arbitrary rules, such as height and weight requirements, that tend to keep women from joining those occupations.27
In 1983, the Court ruled that life insurance companies cannot charge different rates for women and men.28

A question that the Court has not ruled on is whether women should be allowed to participate in military combat. Generally, the Supreme Court has left this decision up to Congress and the Department of Defense. In 1994 Congress repealed the “risk rule” barring women from all combat situations. As a result over 90 percent of positions in the military are now open to women, and most experts think it is only a matter of time until there is full gender integration. Most recently, the navy has opened service on submarines to women, beginning in 2012. While technically women cannot be “assigned” to direct combat units, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched the limits of that law, and more women have been “attached” to frontline units in combat support positions. Generally, the public supports increasing women's combat role. A 2009 poll found that 53 percent of those polled would favor permitting women to “join combat units, where they would be directly involved in the ground fighting.”

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. A basic problem remained, however: Minority groups and women, because of past discrimination, often lacked the education and skills to compete effectively in the marketplace. In 1965, the federal government attempted to remedy this problem by implementing the concept of affirmative action . Affirmative action policies attempt to “level the playing field” by giving special preferences in educational admissions and employment decisions to groups that have been discriminated against in the past.

In most parts of the United States, residential concentrations by race have made it difficult to achieve racial balance in schools. This concentration results in de facto segregation , as distinct from de jure segregation , which results from laws or administrative decisions.

Before the Stonewall incident, 49 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, more than half of these laws were either repealed or struck down by the courts. In 2003, the Court reversed an earlier antisodomy position51
with its decision in Lawrence v. Texas.52
The Court held that laws against sodomy violate the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, stating: “The liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to choose to enter upon relationships in the confines of their homes and their own private lives and still retain their dignity as free persons.” The result of Lawrence v. Texas was to invalidate all remaining sodomy laws throughout the country.
Today, 20 states and the District of Columbia have laws protecting lesbians and gays against discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations, and credit. Several laws at the national level have also been changed over the past two decades. Among other things, the government has lifted a ban on hiring gays and lesbians and voided a 1952 law prohibiting gays and lesbians from immigrating to the United States..
The controversy over this issue was fueled 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.54
In the wake of this event, other states began to worry about whether they might have to treat gay men or lesbians who were legally married in another state as married couples in their state as well. Opponents of gay rights pushed for state laws banning same -sex marriages, and the majority of states enacted such laws or adopted constitutional amendments. At the federal level, Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, which bans federal recognition of lesbian and gay couples and allows state governments to ignore same -sex marriages performed in other states. However, in 2009 President Obama signed an order extending health care and other benefits to the partners of gay federal employees. President Obama does not support same -sex marriage .The controversy over gay marriages was fueled again by developments in the state of Vermont. In 1999, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that gay couples are entitled to the same benefits of marriage as opposite-sex couples.55
Subsequently, in April 2000, the Vermont legislature passed a law permitting gay and lesbian couples to form “civil unions.” The law entitled partners forming civil unions to receive some 300 state benefits available to married couples, including the rights to inherit a partner's property and to decide on medical treatment for an incapacitated partner. In 2005, Connecticut became the second state to adopt civil unions. Neither law entitled partners to receive any benefits allowed to married couples under federal law, such as spousal Social Security benefits.