1. American Government and Politics Today
Chapter Five:
Civil Rights

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Learning Outcomes
LO 1 Summarize the historical experience of African Americans, state how the separate-but-equal doctrine was abolished, and describe the consequences of the civil rights movement. LO 2 Contrast the goals of the women’s suffrage movement with the goals of modern feminism. LO 3 Explain the demographic impacts of immigration and of the interactions between European settlers and American Indians. LO 4 Define affirmative action, and provide some of the arguments against it. LO 5 Summarize the recent revolution in the rights enjoyed by gay men and lesbians.
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3. The African American Experience and the Civil Rights Movement
Ending Servitude
Constitutional Amendments
Civil Rights Acts of 1865 to 1875
Civil rights: the rights of all Americans to equal protection under the law, as provided for by the Fourteenth Amendment
Slaves were emancipated by President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863
Thirteenth Amendment (1865) states that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist in the U.S.
Fourteenth Amendment (1868) states that all persons born or naturalized in the U.S. are citizens and no state can deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process
Fifteenth Amendment (1870) right to vote shall not be denied on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude
Civil Rights Acts of 1865 to 1875: passed to enforce the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments
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An African American soldier in the Union Army during the Civil War, about What influence might such troops have had on the struggle for African American rights after the Civil War?
(Archive Photos/Getty Images)
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5. The African American Experience and the Civil Rights Movement
The Ineffectiveness of the Early Civil Rights Laws
Civil Rights Cases
Plessy v. Ferguson: separate but equal
Voting Barriers
Extralegal methods of enforcing white supremacy
Civil Rights Cases: enforcement clause of the 14th Amendment only applies to official actions taken by the states, no private citizens. 20 years later, white majority essentially purposefully forgot the civil rights laws
Plessy v. Ferguson: separate but equal doctrine
Voting Barriers: white primary, grandfather clause, poll taxes, literacy tests
Extralegal Methods: social custom for African Americans to be second-class status. Informal code of behavior and when that behavior was violated, lynching resulted. Southern authorities rarely prosecuted lynchers and white juries wouldn’t convict, even though lynching was illegal
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6. The African American Experience and the Civil Rights Movement
The End of the Separate-but-Equal Doctrine
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
“With ALL deliberate speed”
Reactions to School Integration
Plessy v. Ferguson was not officially overturned until 1954 in unanimous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
Segregation of races in public schools violates equal protection clause of 14th Amendment
Following year, the Court declared that the lower courts needed to ensure that African Americans would be admitted to schools on a nondiscriminatory basis “with all deliberate speed”
Reactions to school integration: white South challenged with National Guard personnel blocking integration in Little Rock, Arkansas
Federal court demanded troops be withdrawn, and finally, President Eisenhower had to federalize the Arkansas National Guard and send in a division of the Army to stop the violence. Integration of the high school followed.
Southern universities remained segregated for a while. President Kennedy had to send in 30,000 combat troops to the University of Mississippi in Oxford to combat the riots
De jure segregation: racial segregation that occurs because of laws or administrative decisions by public agencies
De facto segregation: racial segregation that occurs because of patterns of racial residence and similar social conditions
Nongovernmental discrimination confined African Americans to all-black districts, or ghettos
Desegregation in public schools peaked in 1988 and since, schools have become more segregated
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When Oliver Brown wanted his daughter Linda (shown here) to attend a white school close to their home, he took his case all the way to the United States Supreme Court. The outcome of that case is considered a landmark decision. Why?
(AP Photo)
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8. The African American Experience and the Civil Rights Movement
De Jure and De Facto Segregation
The Civil Rights Movement
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – nonviolence
The March on Washington
Rosa Parks refusing to move to the back of the bus epitomized civil disobedience – a nonviolent, public refusal to obey allegedly unjust laws
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. headed protest of Montgomery bus line
King’s philosophy of nonviolence: sit-ins, freedom rides, freedom marches. Nonviolent African Americans met by violent, hostile whites created strong public support for the civil rights movement
March on Washington: African American leaders organized the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom - Martin Luther King’s famous speech
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Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, speech at the Washington Monument in 1963 was watched by millions of Americans on television. What were his most famous words?
(AFP/Stringer/Getty Images)
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech at the Washington Monument in 1963 was watched by millions of Americans on television. What were his most famous words? (AFP/AFP/Getty Images)
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10. The African American Experience and the Civil Rights Movement
Modern Civil Rights Legislation
The Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Voting Rights Act of 1965
The Civil Rights Act of 1968 and Housing Legislation
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is the most far-reaching bill on civil rights in modern tames – it banned discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, or national origin
Voting Rights Act of 1965: outlawed discriminatory voter-registration tests and authorized federal registration of voters and federally administered voting procedures in any area that discriminated electorally against a particular group
Civil Rights Act of 1968: banned discrimination in most housing and provided penalties for those attempting to interfere
Consequences: By 1980, 55.8% of voting age African Americans in the South were registered. In 2008, African American turnout on the presidential ballots exceeded that of whites.
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11. The African American Experience and the Civil Rights Movement
Modern Civil Rights Legislation
Consequences of civil rights legislation
Political participation by African Americans
Political participation by other minorities
Political Participation by African Americans: more than 10,000 African American elected officials in the U.S.
Congress after 2012 elections: 42 African Americans
2008: 94% of American public that responded to a Gallup poll said they would be willing to vote for an African American president
Other Minorities: Hispanics have gained political power in several states, Latino vote in national elections has grown
About 5,000 Hispanic elected officials in the U.S., after 2012 – 30 Latinos had seats in Congress and 9 members were Asian American
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12. Women’s Struggle for Equal Rights
Early Women’s Political Movements
Suffrage – Nineteenth Amendment
The Modern Women’s Movement
The Equal Rights Amendment
Challenging gender discrimination in the courts
Women in the military
Goal of the early movement was suffrage: the right to vote
1848: first women’s rights convention in New York
1869: Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed the National Woman Suffrage Association
Early 1900s: Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage founded by Alice Paul – national strategy of obtaining an amendment to the Constitution through large-scale marches, civil disobedience, hunger strikes, arrests, jailings
Nineteenth Amendment
Feminism: movement that supports political, economic, and social equality for women
Equal Rights Amendment failed to get ratified over and over, and efforts to reintroduce it today have failed
Women’s rights organization challenged discriminatory statues and policies in the federal courts – gender discrimination violated the 14h Amendment equal protection clause
Women still not required to register in the case of a draft, but Combat Exclusion Policy has been lifted so women will be able to compete for assignment to combat units
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This female soldier is a medic assigned to a Medevac helicopter in Afghanistan. Medevac pilots, crew, and medics are ready to fly at a moment’s notice, picking up coalition soldiers as well as Afghans who require help. Under a Defense Department ruling, women in the U.S. armed forces can now compete to join units that engage in direct combat. Is this rule a positive development?
(John D. McHugh/Getty Images)
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14. Women’s Struggle for Equal Rights
Women in Politics Today
Gender-Based Discrimination in the Workplace
Title VII of Civil Rights Act of 1964
Sexual Harassment
Wage Discrimination
Number of women has increased in at all levels of government
Nancy Pelosi was first woman elected to a leadership post in Congress as Democrats’ minority whip in the House, and was first Speaker of the House
1984 – Geraldine Ferror became first Democratic nominee for VP, 2008 Hillary Clinton campaigned for presidency, Sarah Palin was Republican nominee for VP
Female Supreme Court Justices
Sexual harassment: unwanted physical or verbal conduct or abuse of a sexual nature that interferes with a recipient’s job performances, creates a hostile work environment, or carries with it an implicit or explicit threat of adverse employment consequences
Equal Pay Act (1963): requires employers to provide equal pay for substantially equal work
Women still earn less, on average, than men
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Meg Whitman, currently the CEO of Hewlett Packard, was formerly the CEO of eBay and the 2010 Republican candidate for governor of California. She is speaking at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Texas. What could be done to make it easier for talented women to rise to the top?
(Tom Pennington/Getty Images)
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16. Experiences of Other Minority Groups
Immigration, Latinos, and Civil Rights
Hispanic versus Latino
Changing face of America
Civil rights of immigrants
Hispanics can be of any race – including new immigrants or members of families that have lived in the U.S. for centuries – someone who can claim a heritage from a Spanish-speaking country
Latino: preferred term by many
Immigration and ethnic differences in fertility rate: below-replacement fertility rate of 1.9 children per woman for United States as a whole. Hispanic Americans have current rate of 2.4, African Americans have rate of 2.0, and non-Hispanic white Americans have rate of 1.8
Latinos are usually grouped with African Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans in laws and programs that seek to protect minorities from discrimination or address past discrimination
Immigrants who are not yet citizens possess fewer civil rights than any other identifiable group in the U.S.
Should the roughly 11 million unauthorized immigrants currently in this country be granted a route to legal status and even citizenship?
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17. Experiences of Other Minority Groups
The Agony of the American Indian
The demographic collapse
American Indians in 19th and 20th centuries
High poverty rates – much history behind this problem
Columbus: native population numbers experience one of the most catastrophic collapses in human history – 90% of inhabitants of the New World died because of Old World diseases to which Native Americans had no immunity
American Indian population decreased in 19th century as European American and African American populations explosively grew because Native Americans were forced into ever-smaller territories
End of 19th century: 250,000 – today, close to 3.2 million
Not considered U.S. citizens until 1924
Some native tribes profited from gambling casinos on reservation lands
U.S. Constitution: reservations are not subject to the full authority of the states in which they are located
The struggle for American Indian rights has been popular among other Americans. Why might that be so?
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Russell Means, a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and a former head of the American Indian Movement, testifies before a Senate committee. Means died in October 2012 at his ranch in South Dakota. He was 72. The struggle for American Indian rights has been popular among other Americans. Why might that be so?
(AP Photo/Marcy Nighswander, File)
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19. Figure 5–1: Percentage Changes in U.S. Ethnic Distribution
*Data for 2030 and 2050 are projections. Numbers may not sum to 100 percent due to rounding.
Hispanics may be of any race. The chart categories White, Black, Asian, and Other are limited to non-Hispanics.
Other consists of the following non-Hispanic groups: American Indian, Native Alaskan, Native Hawaiian, Other Pacific Islander, and Two or
more races.
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census and authors’ calculations.
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20. Civil Rights: Extending Equal Protection
Affirmative Action
Executive Order 11246
The Bakke Case
Reverse discrimination
Affirmative action: a policy in educational admissions or job hiring that gives special attention or compensatory treatment to traditionally disadvantaged groups in an effort to overcome present effects of past discrimination
President Lyndon Johnson issued Executive Order in 1965, which mandated affirmative action policies to remedy the effects of past discrimination – included state and local governments, companies that sell goods or services to the federal government, and institutions that receive federal funds, employers who had been ordered to develop such a plan by a court or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and labor unions that had a history of discrimination
Reverse discrimination: discrimination against individuals who are not members of a minority group
Allan Bakke, a white student who had been turned down for medical school, sued the University of California
Court decided race cannot be the sole factor for admissions and hiring decisions
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21. Civil Rights: Extending Equal Protection
Additional Limits on Affirmative Action
Strict scrutiny
The End of Affirmative Action?
Additional Restrictions
Fisher v. University of Texas
Strict scrutiny: a judicial standard for assessing the constitutionality of a law or government action when the law or action threatens to interfere with a fundamental right or potentially discriminates on the basis of race
An affirmative action program cannot make use of quotas or preferences for unqualified persons
In 2007, Supreme Court found that race could not be used as a “tiebreaker” when granting admission to a school
Fisher v. University of Texas: the Court overturned Grutter v. Bollinger and effectively abolished the use of affirmative action in admissions to state colleges and universities
Didn’t affect affirmative action programs at private schools and colleges
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22. The Rights and Status of Gay Males and Lesbians
Growth in the Gay Male and Lesbian Rights Movement
State and Local Laws Targeting Gay Men and Lesbians
Lawrence v. Texas
State Actions
In 1969, gay men and lesbians fought with police in New York City after a police raid on a bar popular with gay men and lesbians (Stonewall Inn)– gay activism groups sprang up around the country
Thousands of organizations have formed to exert pressure on legislatures, the media, schools, churches, and other organizations to recognize gay men and lesbian’s rights to equal treatment
Lawrence v. Texas: reversed Bowers v. Hardwick decision, which made homosexual conduct between 2 adults a crime. The Court held in Lawrence v. Texas that laws against sodomy violate the due process clause of the 14th Amendment
25 states have enacted laws protecting lesbians and gay men from discrimination in employment in at least some workplaces
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23. The Rights and Status of Gay Males and Lesbians
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
Same-Sex Marriage
The Defense of Marriage Act
State Recognition of Same-Sex Marriage
The Supreme Court Supports the States
President Bill Clinton “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (1993): Enlistees would not be asked about their sexual orientation, and gay men and lesbians would be allowed to serve in the military as long as they did not declare that they were gay men or lesbians or commit homosexual acts. – compromise
Due to a district court ruling that the ban on open service was unconstitutional, a federal court of appeals agreed, and Congress finally phased out “Don’t ask, don’t tell” in mid-2011
Defense of Marriage Act of 1991: banned federal recognition of lesbian and gay couples and allowed state governments to ignore same-sex marriages performed in other states
In 2010, a federal judge ruled that Prop 8 violated the U.S. Constitution, but same-sex marriages did not resume in California until 2013 when the Court all agreed but same-sex marriage rights were not extended to any other state
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This same-sex couple in California was married during a several-month interval in 2008 when such marriages were legal in that state. California continued to recognize these marriages even after a vote in November 2008 that prohibited new same-sex marriages. Why has support for same-sex marriage grown so rapidly in the United States and around the world?
(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
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25. Gay Marriage Comes to New York State
Click picture to play video
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26. Gay Marriage Comes to New York State
Taking a closer look:
Is it fundamentally unfair for same-sex couples to experience economic disadvantages in some states?
Why do you think marriage is regulated on a state level?
Was the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional? Why or why not?
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