The Age of Segregation, 1900–1950

This chapter argues that segregation generated organized opposition from African Americans and a small group of whites that challenged the system. Segregation was rigid, capricious, and designed to demonstrate white power. While it kept most blacks in menial positions, a small black middle class emerged that produced leaders who attacked Jim Crow. The organization leading the charge was the NAACP, which developed publicity, lobbying, and litigation campaigns. The effort gained steam in the 1930s, as a cadre of black lawyers challenged segregated education, the CIO and the Communist party championed civil rights, and the New Deal gave blacks a voice in federal policy. It further accelerated during World War II as the federal government challenged workplace discrimination, membership in civil rights organizations swelled, black veterans demanded their rights, and the Supreme Court became more aggressive on civil rights.

With Liberty for Some

This chapter examines antislavery ideas and action sparked by the American Revolution as well as the compromises between northern and southern delegates at the Constitutional Convention. The convention created a document that recognized slavery and provided significant, albeit limited protection to it. By building political coalitions and appealing to northern racism, southerners won legislation such as the Fugitive Slave Act, administrative regulations such as exclusion of antislavery literature from the mail, and judicial interpretations of the Constitution such as Prigg v. Pennsylvania that strengthened protection for slavery between 1789 and the 1840s, transforming it into a proslavery document. State law further strengthened slavery by giving masters almost unquestioned authority over slaves and significantly restricting the rights of free blacks.

Equality Deferred, 1870–1900

This chapter argues that the revolutionary changes brought to the South by Reconstruction and black empowerment generated a sustained and violent reaction from southern whites that, by 1900, was successful in restoring white dominance because of restrictive Supreme Court decisions, congressional inaction, and waning public support for civil rights among white northerners. Republicans remained committed to civil rights and deployed federal power to break the Ku Klux Klan in the 1870s, but white southern persistence and divided government in the late 1870s and 1880s compromised this effort. In the 1890s, white Democrats, in control of state and most local governments in the South and fearful of continued black resistance, enacted measures to disfranchise African Americans and impose segregation. Although African Americans continued to resist and enjoyed some successes in the North, by 1900, southern whites had created a repressive racial caste system.

The Elusive Quest for Equality, 1969–1989

Although the nation became more conservative in the 1970s and 1980s, civil rights advocates built on legislative and legal victories of the 1960s to create race-conscious remedies to challenge institutionalized racism. Their position was strengthened by a growing women’s movement that became an important element of the civil rights coalition. Affirmative action and remedies against practices that had a disparate impact on minorities and women expanded employment opportunities; renewal and broad interpretation of the Voting Rights Act dramatically increased the number of black and Hispanic elected officials; and busing offered a new remedy for school segregation. Claiming that the Constitution was color-blind, Republicans attacked race-conscious remedies as “reverse racism” and used race as a wedge to make inroads among traditional Democratic constituencies. They used their growing strength to restrict busing and affirmative action and launch a war on drugs that led to mass incarceration of African Americans.

The Civil Rights Movement and American Law, 1950–1969

This chapter shows that Brown v. Board of Education raised hope for fundamental change but produced few results. Massive resistance blocked school integration, and only the emergence of black-led organizations and massive grass-roots protests forced Presidents Kennedy and Johnson to support civil rights legislation and Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act. The federal bureaucracy and courts aggressively enforced these laws to topple Jim Crow, bring African Americans into the political process, and open economic opportunities. Although change was dramatic, it bypassed many poor blacks, including those living in northern cities. As the 1960s ended, their anger sparked urban uprisings that shattered the illusion of progress and generated a white backlash.

The National Commitment to Civil Equality, 1861–1870

This chapter argues that the Constitution was transformed during the Civil War era, making it a charter of liberty and individual rights rather than a document concerned principally with federal relations, property rights, and protection of slavery. During the war, Republicans, abolitionists, and African American activists tied preservation of the Union to emancipation, culminating in adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. During Reconstruction the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, Civil Rights Act of 1866, Reconstruction Acts, and Enforcement Acts gave substance to emancipation. Taken together, these measures established color-blind citizenship and guaranteed national protection for the fundamental rights of all citizens. African Americans eagerly grasped these rights and used them to assert their independence of whites. They eagerly participated in the political process, electing state and local officials who were responsive to their demands for equal rights and personal security.

The Color-Blind Challenge to Civil Rights, 1990–Present

Since 1990, civil rights advocates have lost ground to conservative attacks on color-conscious remedies for institutionalized racism. Insisting that the Constitution is color-blind, a conservative Supreme Court has limited affirmative action, declared a key provision of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional, limited others, and affirmed state voter ID laws that limit minority voting. Despite electing the first black president in 2008, liberals have enjoyed limited success in defending civil rights protections. They secured passage of the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1991 to reverse damaging Supreme Court decisions, renewed the Voting Rights Act in 2006, and won cases defending affirmative action. Groups like Black Lives Matter have sparked a new grass-roots activism to protest police violence and pressed for an end to mass incarceration. While their success is limited, they continue a tradition that has shaped the nation since its inception.

Law and Liberty, 1830–1860

This chapter examines the rise of radical abolitionism in the 1820s and 1830s as well as the emergence of the Colored Convention movement in the North that challenged slavery and discrimination against free blacks. African Americans as well as white abolitionists developed an interpretation of the Constitution that employed republicanism, due process of law, and equal citizenship to challenge slavery and discrimination. With the acquisition of vast territories in the Southwest from Mexico in the late 1840s, many northerners feared that slavery would expand and strengthen southern political power. New political groups, notably the Republican Party, grew in strength and embraced antislavery constitutional ideas. A southern-dominated Supreme Court responded in the Dred Scott case, ruling that African Americans were not citizens and that Congress lacked authority to exclude slavery from the territories. Republican victory in 1860 signaled the triumph of antislavery constitutional ideas and precipitated secession.