The Logic of American Politics

1
Civil Rights
Chapter Four
2
Important Civil Rights Questions

• How could a nation that embraced the Declaration
  of Independences creed that all men are
  created equal condone slavery?
• Why would a majority in society ever seek to
  extend and protect the rights of its minorities
  in the face of huge costs even those imposed by
  a tragic civil war?
• Does Americas constitutional system impede or
  promote the cause of civil rights?
• Are civil rights generic, or do we define them
  differently across groups according to issues for
  which they seek protection?
• Scenario Racial profiling after September 11,
  2001

3
What Are Civil Rights?

• Civil rights
• Those protections by government power things
  government must secure on behalf of its citizens.
• Civil liberties
• The Constitutions protections from government
  power.
• Civic rights during colonial times
• Civil rights term emerged in 1760s
• No taxation without representation
• Modern day civil rights more expansive

4
Civil Rights of African Americans

• Good test of Madisons ideas on democracy in
  America.
• African Americans faced two major obstacles in
  securing rights.
• Constitution
• reserves authority to the states
• separation of powers
• Politics based on self-interest
• government controlled by men not angels

5
Politics of Black Civil Rights Height of
Slavery 18081865

• 1807 Congress passes a law ending the importation
  of slaves
• Missouri Compromise 1820
• Wilmot Proviso
• Missouri Compromise of 1850
• Fugitive Slave Law
• Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857)
• Abraham Lincoln and the 1860 presidential
  election
• Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men
• Civil War (1861)

6
Reconstruction 1865-1877

• Reconstruction
• Result of congressional Republicans potential
  defeat in the next national election
• Civil War Amendments
• Thirteenth (formal emancipation)
• Fourteenth (granted citizenship)
• Fifteenth (guaranteed the right to vote)
• Access to ballot box limited even in Union states

7
Rights Lost The Failure of Reconstruction

• Republicans dominated Southern legislatures for a
  few years
• Ended when white Democrats won back control of
  Tennessee and Virginia
• By 1877 all former Confederate states had
  reverted to white Democratic control
• African Americans began to lose power
• Vigilante violence (KKK and other groups)
• Commitment from northern Republicans waned
  passed laws, but provided no enforcement
• Reconstruction officially ended with the election
  of 1876
• 1877 all federal troops pulled out of the South

8
The Jim Crow Era and Segregation 1877-1933

• Jim Crow laws
• Focus to disenfranchise and segregate African
  Americans
• institutionalized segregation
• Electoral laws to limit blacks from voting
• white primary
• poll tax
• literacy tests
• grandfather clauses provided to protect poor and
  illiterate whites
• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
• separate but equal doctrine

9
Democratic Party Sponsorship of Civil Rights
1933-1940s

• FDR and the Great Depression
• The New Deal
• evenhanded treatment of the black community
• government assistance
• rooted out racial discrimination in the
  distribution of relief aid
• appointed more than one hundred black
  administrators
• Justice Department rejuvenated its civil
  liberties division

10
Democratic Party Sponsorship of Civil Rights
1933-1940s

• Congressional action by Democrats
• Wooing of black voters by the Democratic Party
• Shift from the party of Lincoln to the party
  of Roosevelt
• Truman in 1948 openly courted black votes
• integrated armed services and introduced other
  initiatives
• 1948 Democratic National Convention
• Dixiecrats bolted due to strong civil rights
  platform
• Strom ThurmondStates Rights Party
• Truman won reelection

11
Emergence of a Civil Rights Coalition 1940s1950s

• NAACPs litigation strategy
• Smith v. Allwright
• threw out white primary laws
• Sweatt v. Painter (1950)
• Court unanimously agreed that Univ. of Texas
  could not stave off desegregation at its law
  school by instantly creating a black-only
  facility.
• patently unequal
• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)
• trumped the Plessy decision

12
Civil Rights Acts

• The 1957 Civil Rights Act
• Lyndon Johnsons vehicle into national politics
• Law allowed African Americans to sue in federal
  court if their right to vote had been denied due
  to race
• Politically significant Johnsons southern
  colleagues did not fight it
• Johnson did not win the nomination but he became
  Kennedys vice presidential choice
• catalyst to emergence of a dominant governing
  coalition

13
The Civil Rights Movement1960s

• Strategy shifted from litigation to mass protest.
• Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott
• sit ins
• collective action brought need for leadership
• emergence of Rev. Martin Luther King
• strategy of non-violent resistance

14
The Civil Rights Movement1960s

• Birmingham Demonstration
• Kennedy assassination
• Johnson pushed for enactment of the civil rights
  legislation stalled in the Senate
• addressed joint session of Congress on national
  television
• Resulted in landmark legislation Civil Rights
  Act of 1964

15
The 1964 Civil Rights Act

• Law authorized the national government to end
  segregation in
• public education
• public accommodations
• Partisan shift in Congress
• Republican Party traditionally more supportive of
  Civil Rights
• 1964 Republican party chose Barry Goldwater, of
  Arizona as presidential candidate.
• Goldwater opposed the 1964 civil rights bill
• outcome was a landslide win for the Johnson and
  the Democrats

16
The Voting Rights Act of 1965

• Main provision authorized the Justice Department
  to suspend restrictive electoral tests in
  southern states that had a history of low black
  turnout.
• could send federal officers to register voters
  directly
• states had to obtain clearance from the Justice
  Department before changing their electoral laws
• the law achieved its goals quickly
• high point of civil rights movement
• Watts Riots
• Vietnam War
• Assassination of MLK

17
The Era of Remedial Action The 1970s to the
Present

• Legislation moved responsibility in the area of
  identifying and eradicating civil rights abuses
  to the federal bureaucracy.
• Department of Health, Education, and Welfare
• focus on outcome of local practices
• did not have to investigate and prove a specific
  act
• reasonable suspicion of discrimination

18
The Era of Remedial Action The 1970s to the
Present

• De facto segregation segregation not mandated by
  law (de jure segregation), but was a byproduct of
  discriminatory housing laws.
• Busing
• Affirmative action
• quotasBakke case (1978)
• Michigans ban on affirmative action (2006)
• Proposition 209
• Florida ban on racial preferences in university
  admissions

19
The Legacy of the Civil Rights Movement

• 1970s expansion to include women, the elderly,
  the disabled, homosexuals, and many other ethnic
  minorities.
• Constitutional hurdles to establishing a
  particular right for a particular group
• right must be recognized as such by those who
  make and enforce the law
• enforcement

20
Equal Rights for Women The Right to Vote

• Suffragists
• active in many areas including abolition, prison
  reform, public education, temperance
• once they won the right to vote there was little
  delay in its implementation.
• tracked a different course than suffrage for
  African Americans
• womens vote no advantage to any one party
  neither wanted to bear the cost
• four decades to achieve the Nineteenth Amendment

21
Modern History of Civil Rights

• Sex discrimination
• added to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as killer
  amendment by Southern opponents backfired and
  passed
• EEOC
• NOW
• Equal Rights Amendment
• originally introduced in 1923 sent to the states
  in 1972 by a vote of 35424 House and 84 to 8 in
  the Senate.
• by 1978 thirty-five states had ratified the
  amendment.
• hit a brick wall with the abortion issue, but
  while the amendment did not get ratified,
  significant inroads made in womens rights

22
Modern History of Civil Rights

• Employment discrimination
• Title VII (1964)
• Title IX of the Higher Education Act (1972)
• Pregnancy Discrimination Act (1978)
• Family and Medical Leave Act (1993)
• Civil Rights Act of 1991
• Title IX of the Higher Education Act

23
Rights for Hispanics

• Special civil rights issues associated with
  language and citizenship.
• lack language skills to exercise their civic
  responsibilities
• Voting Rights Act extension in 1970
• requires that ballots also be available in
  Spanish in those constituencies where at least 5
  percent of the population is Hispanic

24
Rights for Hispanics

• Alexander v. Sandoval (2001)English-only state
  documents as discriminatory?
• Question of citizenshiplegal rights for
  non-citizens?
• Increased political powergrowing numbers and
  concentration residentially

25
Gay Rights

• Prominent national issue
• Gay rights claims, however, do not fit well into
  the statutory provisions or judicial precedents
  that were created during the civil rights era
• Failed to attract the levels of popular support
  that helped other groups

26
Gay Rights

• Gains have been modest
• Lawrence v. Texas (2003) re antisodomy laws
• state laws extending job and hate crime
  protections to gays and lesbians.
• Romer v. Evans (1996)
• anti-gay marriage movement
• Bush 2004 proposed a constitutional amendment
  that defined marriage as between a man and a
  woman
• California ban on same-sex marriage lifted in
  2008, but ballot measure revoked lifting of the
  ban

27
The Disabled

• Americans with Disability Act (1990)
• definition of disabled ambiguous
• Pilot eyesightnot 20/20was this a disability?
  Could they sue the airline for not hiring them?
  Court said no
• Casey Martin, a golfer with an atrophied leg, won
  the Courts support in his fight to use a golf
  cart on the PGA tour even though the use of carts
  was prohibited

28
Challenging Tyranny

• Struggle for civil rights has seriously tested
  the politics of self-interest
• Madison viewed competing ambitions as performing
  a limited, but vital, service
• Civil rights history suggests that ambitious
  politicians were able to transform moral justice
  into public policy