Equal Rights - El Camino College Compton Center

The Quest for Equal Justice
•Riots and Reaction
•Watts, CA 1965 •Detroit 1967 •Vietnam War and Watergate diverted attention from civil rights •Little governmental attention since then
• The Civil Rights Cases (1883)
– Invalidated much of the civil rights legislation in the Civil Rights cases.
Beginning with WWI, African Americans began to migrate northward.
Civil Rights: Introduction
• Refer to those things that the government must do to provide equal protection and freedom from discrimination for all citizens. • Traditionally, thought of as rooted in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. • Early attempts at true protection were unsuccessful because the Supreme Court believed that it was not within its purview to stop non-governmental discrimination.
Women’s Struggle for Equal Rights
• Early Women’s Political Movements
– Activism for women’s rights began with the Seneca Falls convention in 1848.
• Fifteenth Amendment did not bar denial of the vote on the grounds of gender • Women had to fight for universal suffrage • Women’s Suffrage Associations
slation
During Reconstruction (late 1860s-1870s), Congress passed civil rights laws, but, the Supreme Court struck down many of these laws.
Slavery in the United States
• Ending servitude
– The Thirteenth Amendment (1865) prohibits slavery within the United States. – The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) established that all persons born in the United States are citizens and no state shall deprive citizens of their rights under the Constitution. – The Fifteenth Amendment (1870) established the right of citizens to vote.
Challenges to Civil Rights Legislation
•Segregation and White Supremacy
• Plessy v. Ferguson – Separate-but-Equal Doctrine • Voting Barriers – White primary, the grandfather clause, poll taxes, literacy tests • Extralegal Methods of Enforcing White Supremacy
-Dr. Martin Luther King
The End of the Separate-but-Equal Doctrine
• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
– Overturned Plessy v. Ferguson – “With All Deliberate Speed.”
Equality and Equal Rights
• Most agree that everyone should have equality of opportunity • Some also focus attention on equality between groups – Affirmative action • Questions regarding equality of results
By 1877, Reconstruction was ended, and northern political leaders abandoned African Americans to their fate at the hands of their former white masters.
• The Civil Rights Acts of 1865 to 1875
– Aimed at the Southern states. – Attempted to prevent states from passing laws that would circumvent the amendments
• Court-Ordered Busing • The Resurgence of Minority Schools • The Civil Rights Act of 1964
– – – – Voter registration Public accommodations Public schools Employment
Dred Scott, Reconstruction, and “Jim Crow”
This is a portrait of Dred Scott (1795–1858), an American slave who was born in Virginia and who later moved with his owner to Illinois, where slavery was illegal. He was the nominal plaintiff in a test case that sought to obtain his freedom on the ground that he lived in the free state of Illinois. Although the Supreme Court ruled against him, he was soon emancipated and became a hotel porter in St. Louis.
• Nineteenth Amendment (1920)
Women’s Struggle for Equal Rights
Women Suffrage in the U.S. Compared to other countries
2015
2015 Saudi Arabia
The Modern Women’s Movement
Major Civil Rights Legislation
• • • • • • • • • • Civil Rights Act, 1957 Civil Rights Act, 1964 Voting Rights Act, 1965 Age Discrimination in Employment Act, 1967 Fair Housing Act, 1968 Title IX, Education Amendment of 1972 Rehabilitation Act, 1973 Fair Housing Act Amendments, 1988 Americans with Disabilities Act, 1990 Civil Rights Act, 1991
“Four-fifths of a penny for your thoughts”
The power to regulate interstate commerce allowed Congress to forbid discrimination like this in places of public accommodation in the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Citizenship Rights
•How Citizenship is Acquired and Lost •Naturalization: A legal action conferring citizenship on an alien •Dual Citizenship: Citizenship in more than one nation •Right of expatriation: The right to renounce one’s citizenship •Rights of American Citizens (can be curbed during times of war) •The Right to Live and Travel in the United States •The Right to Travel Abroad •Rights of Aliens •Admission to the United States