Download Senate Debate on Civil Rights: 1964 Background Information

Senate Debate on Civil Rights: 1964
Background Information
Director: Michael Pepe
© 2009 Institute for Domestic & International Affairs, Inc.
This document is solely for use in preparation for Rutgers Model Congress 2009.
Use for any other purpose is not permitted without the expressed written consent of IDIA.
For more information, please write us at [email protected].
Introduction _________________________________________________________________ 1
The Senate _______________________________________________________________________ 1
A History of Civil Rights Law ___________________________________________________ 2
1865: The Black Codes _____________________________________________________________ 2
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 ________________________________________________________ 3
1865-1870: The Reconstruction Amendments __________________________________________ 5
The Civil Rights Act of 1871 ________________________________________________________ 7
The Civil Rights Act of 1875 ________________________________________________________ 7
Voting Rights During Reconstruction_________________________________________________ 9
Plessy v. Ferguson ________________________________________________________________ 11
Brown v. Board of Education_______________________________________________________ 13
The Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 ______________________________________________ 14
Perspectives on Civil Rights____________________________________________________ 16
The Eisenhower Administration ____________________________________________________ 16
The Kennedy Administration ______________________________________________________ 17
The Civil Rights Movement ________________________________________________________ 18
Discussion Questions _________________________________________________________ 21
Bibliography ________________________________________________________________ 22
Works Cited_____________________________________________________________________ 22
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Introduction
The quest for civil rights for African Americans has been an enduring theme in
American history. The question of slavery led to the nation’s bloodiest war and nearly
destroyed the union. Post-war Reconstruction sought to mend the fractured relationship
between the Union and the Confederacy, as the North endeavored to stomp out the legacy
of slavery by granting freedmen the ability to live in a free society open to their political
and social participation.
Despite strong legislative pushes by northern Democrats,
segregation became entrenched in the South. The end of Reconstruction ushered in a
culture which systematically discourages and marginalized African Americans through
legislation, intimidation, and violence.
In 1964, the debate on civil rights for African Americans presented the Senate
with an issue that cut to the core of each of its founding principles. The debate did not
only raise questions of racial equality, but also questions of federalism and state’s rights.
Northern and southern states fiercely debated the extent to which the United States
government could legally force states to end segregationist policies—or do anything for
that matter. The Senate’s structure—which required a sixty vote supermajority in order
to bring any issue to a vote—allowed a minority of Senators to stall debate indefinitely,
despite the fact that civil rights had a broad base of public and governmental support.
The will and endurance of opposing Senate coalition would play a vital role in
determining the outcome of one of the great debates and movements in American history.
The Senate
The United States Senate stands among the world’s most esteemed political
institutions. Great American statesmen, activists, and dynamic figures have occupied its
seats and conducted the nation’s business in its halls and chambers. Unique in many
ways, the Senate reflects important realities about the founding tenets and governmental
philosophies of the United States. Each of the fifty states in the Union is entitled to two
United States Senators.
Regardless of size, wealth, or population, this equality
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underscores that the nation was born out of thirteen very different, largely autonomous
colonies which had only united in any meaningful way to cast off British colonial rule.
Each new state was different, and many—particularly citizens from smaller, less
influential states—feared that a larger more well-represented state could utilize the
national government to encroach on the sovereignty of its neighbors and impose its will
on the new nation.1 Equal representation in the Senate enshrines the importance of each
state and its fundamental right to self-determination. In addition, the Founders gave these
senators six-year, overlapping terms in office. This assured a sense of continuity and
experience which also insulated the body’s members from the constant threat of being
voted from office by their constituencies. 2 While the House of Representatives was
intentioned to give an accurate pulse of the needs and wishes of United States citizens,
the Constitution installs the Senate as a check preventing the government from creating
imprudent laws and policies in response to a fickle, impassioned public.
A History of Civil Rights Law
1865: The Black Codes
The South’s defeat at the end of the Civil War failed to put to rest the issue of race
in the Confederate states. The Thirteenth Amendment solidified and expanded Lincoln’s
Emancipation Proclamation, outlawing slavery in any form in the United States and the
Territories.
This radical shift provided a shock to the region both economically,
politically and socially.
The reality that a population that had been almost wholly
enslaved now lived as free men and women spurred an avalanche of legislative action at
the state and local level intended to mitigate their newfound liberty. A number of
southern legislatures enacted the so-called “Black Codes,” a series of laws aimed at
returning blacks to their previous condition of servitude.
States and municipalities crafted the Black Codes to create a new systematic
means to control the actions of the freed slaves. Some Southerners felt that the institution
1
2
Janet Anderson, The Senate (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 2007), 16.
Ibid, 19
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of slavery alone had kept blacks civilized and that their new status would effectively
remove these constraints. Freed slaves, they thought, were liable to commit acts of
violence against their former owners and the general populace, particularly women.
Laws sought to place serious limits on the actions of blacks. Certain codes imposed
curfews and barred blacks from entering certain towns altogether without the approval of
an employer. In many places, blacks were forced to pay special taxes for the right to run
businesses or were banned outright from doing so.
Exacerbating these conditions were rules that forced former slaves to effectively
relapse back into their previous status. In Mobile, Alabama, blacks who had no “fixed
residence or [could not] give a good account of themselves…to give security for their
good behavior for a reasonable time and to indemnify the city against any charge for their
support.” If they were unable to satisfy the regulation and those responsible for enforcing
it, they were “to be confined to labor for a limited time, not exceeding six calendar
months . . . for the benefit of said city.” Laws prevented blacks from owning firearms
and even banned white business owners from selling food and clothes to blacks.
Historian Page Smith describes Black Codes as “a new kind of legal servitude
distinguished by all the disadvantages of slavery and none of its advantages [such as
guaranteed food and housing]—a state, many argued, that was worse than slavery itself.”3
The Civil Rights Act of 1866
In 1866 Congress took action to suppress the Southern states adoption of the Black
Codes. While the Thirteenth Amendment had abolished slavery, regulations implemented
by various Southern states imposed travel restrictions, poor labor contracts, and harsh
corporal punishment. Many Northern Americans resisted the South’s backsliding on
issues of race, and Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull introduced what would become the
first American law to bear the title ‘Civil Rights Act.’ “When it comes to be understood
in all parts of the United States,” he then proclaimed, “that any person who shall deprive
3
Page Smith, Trial by Fire: A People’s History of the Civil War and Reconstruction, New York: McGraw-Hill,
1982.
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another of any right or subject him to any punishment in consequence of his color or race
will expose himself to fine and imprisonment, I think such acts will soon cease.”4
The Congress, dominated by Northern Republicans, centered the bill on
citizenship, extending this status to all individuals born in the United States, notably
slaves. Through this action, lawmakers sought to ensure that blacks reserved some of the
most basic rewards of citizenship, namely the right to hold property, file lawsuits, and
take part in contracts. While the law sought to effectively negate the Southern state’s
Black Codes, it refrained from addressing many issues relating to civil rights. The law
did not, for instance, seek to impose limits on segregation in accommodations or provide
any mechanism to enforce voting rights and other political liberties.5
President Andrew Johnson vetoed the legislation. Among his objections were that
the South had not yet been able to send the greater part of its slate of senators to
Washington and that the bill marked a dangerous intrusion by the Federal government in
state affairs. Furthermore, his dissent was couched in racial language and claimed that
“the distinction of race and color is by the bill made to operate in favor of the colored and
against the white race.”6 He asserted that blacks were “less informed as to the nature and
character of our institutions” and that the spirit of the bill could lead towards interracial
marriage and a general upheaval of the American social structure.7
Congress overrode the Johnson veto and passed the Civil Rights Act into law.
This constituted was first time Congress had ever overridden a presidential veto of a
major piece of legislation.8 Congressional defiance of the President severed the link
between two institutions and encouraged northern advocates of civil liberties.
This
momentum was critical to the eventual ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, which
4
“US Supreme Court JONES v. MAYER CO., 392 U.S. 409 (1968),” Social Science Resource Network,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=940643 (accessed January 30, 2009).
5
Christopher A. Bracey, “Civil Rights Act of 1866: Major Acts of Congress,” Enotes.com,
http://www.enotes.com/major-acts-congress/civil-rights-act (accessed January 30, 2009).
6
Ibid (Bracey)
7
Ibid (Bracey)
8
James D. Richardson, ed., “President Johnson’s Veto of the Civil Rights Act, 1866,” Messages and Papers, Vol.
VI, p. 405ff, http://wps.prenhall.com/wps/media/objects/107/109768/ch16_a2_d1.pdf.
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assured freed slaves full United States citizenship, and other future legislative action
touching on civil rights.9
1865-1870: The Reconstruction Amendments
Even before the fall of the Confederacy, Congress began to propose constitutional
amendments to legally end slavery in the United States.10 While President Lincoln’s
Emancipation Proclamation had freed slaves in the Confederacy, slavery remained legal
in loyalist states that permitted the practice.11 Additionally, many individuals on both
sides of the slavery debate questioned the legal efficacy of the decree and whether it was
within Lincoln’s power to issue. Moreover, many posited that the proclamation would be
seen strictly as a wartime measure and would prove ineffective after the South rejoined
the Union.12 Not just any congressional action was needed, however. Many felt that the
institution of slavery could not be eliminated by any mere act of Congress, but instead
required the adoption of a Constitutional Amendment explicitly outlawing the practice.13
Though some of the first efforts stalled, by the beginning of 1864, congressional
support for the amendment congealed. President Lincoln took a proactive role and placed
the ratification of the first new constitutional amendment in over sixty years on the
Republican platform for the 1864 elections later that year. On 1 February 1865, the
amendment passed, in effect freeing some 40,000 slaves in Kentucky and officially
ending the long history of slavery on the North American continent.
The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, had significant implications for civil
rights and liberties as well as constitutional law. The Amendment was a critical element
of the Reconstruction effort and was passed in response to the string of laws passed in the
9
William T. Martin Riches, The Civil Rights Movement: Struggle and Resistance, New York: Palgrave MacMillan,
2004, p. 4.
10
Michael Burgan, The Reconstruction Amendments, (Minneapolis, MN: Compass Point Books, 2006), p.6.
11
These states were: Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri, and New Jersey at the time of the 13th Amendment’s
ratification.
12
“The Constitution of the United States of America: Thirteenth Amendment – Slavery and Involuntary Servitude,”
United States Government Printing Office, November 1, 1996,
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/constitution/html/amdt13.html (accessed February 8, 2009).
13
Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante– Bellum South (New York: Vintage Books,
1956).
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South denying essential civil liberties to the freed slave population. The Amendment was
a direct response to the 1857 case of Dred Scott v. Sandford which raised questions of
black citizenship and the government’s ability to regulate slavery. The Court ruled that
Congress could not forbid slavery in the Western territories, and, more significantly, an
8-1 majority deemed that Negroes, slave or free and living in the North and South, were
strictly property, or former property, and therefore not citizens.14
The Amendment granted United States citizenship to all persons born in the
nation, regardless of race or previous condition of servitude. Additionally, it provided
that states had to treat these new black citizens equally under their laws, counteracting
many of the attempts to remove many essential rights under the Black Codes. It’s text
would provide momentum for future groups striving to achieve a more complete
realization of these principles: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State
deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to
any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
The Fifteenth Amendment to Constitution of the United States was ratified on 3
February 1870. The first section of the brief document provided that, “The right of
citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States
or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” The
Fourteenth Amendment had guaranteed citizenship two years earlier, but southern states
had not extended suffrage to blacks and many northern states disallowed former slaves
from voting. While the amendment marked a major step toward endowing freed slaves
with the full rights of citizenship, the text left out a number of important items. The Act
did not prevent states from setting a number of limits on voting. The amendment did not
forbid property qualifications, literacy requirements, or the poll tax. All of these caveats
would be used in the South to intentionally, and legally, keep blacks away from the
polling booth.
14
Lisa Cozzens, “The Supreme Court's Decision,” June 22, 1998,
http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/scott/supremecourt.html (accessed February 8, 2009).
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The Civil Rights Act of 1871
The principal agent of violence against southern blacks was the Ku Klux Klan. A
semi-secretive organization, the Klan terrorized blacks into submission and out of
mainstream southern politics and society. Along with other similar pressure groups, the
Klan worked to negate the effect of the Federal legislative program granting rights and
liberties to freed slaves. The group’s aggressive actions yielded success, much to the
dismay of blacks and civil rights advocates.
President Ulysses S. Grant requested
legislation to counteract the rising power of the Klan, and Congress passed a civil rights
bill popularly known as the Klan Act in 1871.15 The law stated that no person “…shall
conspire together for the purpose in any manner impeding, hindering, obstructing or
defeating the due course of justice in an State or Territory…due and equal protection of
the laws, or to injury any person in his person or his property for lawfully enforcing the
right of any person or class of persons by force, intimidation, or threat to prevent any
citizen of the United States lawfully entitled to vote.”
Congress set penalties for participating in Klan activities and supporting methods
of intimidation. It permitted the president to use federal troops explicitly to monitor and
thwart Klan activity.
The law enabled the president to suspend habeas corpus, a
prerogative Grant used only once in a number of counties.16 The act also prohibited
Klansmen and other antagonists from serving on juries. Like much of the Reconstruction
era legislation, the Klan Act was seldom enforced. Future Supreme Court decisions,
coupled with the end of Reconstruction in 1877, hampered Federal law enforcement’s
ability to prevent and prosecute violations of the law, however egregious.17
The Civil Rights Act of 1875
In 1875 Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner authored the legislation that would
become the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Sumner was a Democrat and ardent abolitionist
15
“Civil Rights Act of 1871,” www.Answers.com Law Encyclopedia, http://www.answers.com/topic/section-1983
(accessed February 12, 2009).
16
Ibid
17
Bernard Schwartz, editor, Statutory History of the United States: Civil Rights, Part I, (New York: Chelsea House,
1970).
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who had been infamously caned on the Senate floor by South Carolina Senator Preston
Brooks. Unsatisfied with the lack of progress and the success of suppression of civil
rights in the South, black leaders lobbied Congress to take bolder legislative action. 18
Congress had already undertaken significant efforts to further this cause in the form of
three constitutional Amendments and multiple laws. Previous efforts had been directed
at realizing full black citizenship and the political consequences stemming wherefrom
such as suffrage, due process, and the right to own property.19 The 1875 act, however,
was intended to accomplish a different purpose.
The bill was intended to encourage racial integration. The bill called for “the full
and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of
inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public
amusement” to “citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of
servitude.” The passage of the act marked a symbolic highpoint for advocates of civil
rights. With citizenship, franchise, and equal protection enshrined in the Constitution, the
addition of equality in accommodation and public life signaled—at least on paper—a
stark reversal for a group that had been enslaved only a decade before.20
The act did provide a moral victory for blacks and other champions for change yet
had a relatively little impact on conditions on the ground in the South. An important
element of the bill—ending segregation in public elementary and secondary schools—
was gutted in debate.21 The copious elements which were passed into law were rarely
enforced, particularly as southern Reconstruction effectively ended after the presidential
election of 1876.
18
Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879: The Story of His
Life as Told by His Children, printed in the New York Independent, April 16, 1874
19
Bertram Wyatt-Brown, “The Civil Rights Act of 1875,” The Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Dec.,
1965), pp. 763-775 , accessed through JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/.
20 James M. McPherson, “Abolitionists and the Civil Rights Act of 1875,” The Journal of American History, Vol.
52, No. 3 (Dec., 1965), pp. 493-510, accessed through JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/.
21
Ibid
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Voting Rights During Reconstruction
After the Civil War, the South was confronted with a significant population of
freed slaves. Reconstruction sought to foster and protect black’s newfound liberties and
privileges, but southern governments quickly moved to restrict their rights. By enacting
harsh legislation they continue to relegate blacks to a well-defined second class status. It
can be argued that white southerners most feared the eventual participation in politics and
government. Freed slaves constituted sizable segments of the populace of many southern
areas and outnumbered whites in Mississippi, South Carolina, and Louisiana.22 Horrified
at the prospect that this demographic might not only participate in, but actually dominate
politics in the South, lawmakers and certain elements of southern society endeavored to
keep African Americans far from the ballot box.
Before the Civil War, the Federal government did not legislate on matters related
to voting, leaving the question of enfranchisement and regulations entirely to the states.
The Constitution was also silent on the matter. As a result, African American voting was
a rarity in first half of the twentieth century as only a few states in the north permitted
certain free blacks to register and most used legal or extra-legal measures to keep them
away.23 The Military Reconstruction Act of 1867 ended this policy. The law required
states to guarantee that every male citizen—with certain exceptions not touching on
“race, color, or previous condition of servitude”—over the age of twenty-one be legally
eligible to register and vote. The act further stipulated that, in order to be readmitted to
the Union, states had to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which
guaranteed citizenship and due process to all freed slaves.24 These federal mandates
accomplished their purpose. Blacks registered to vote and run for and win elected office
at all levels of government. In 1871, the Mississippi legislature elected Hiram Rhodes
Revels to complete the final two years of a vacated Senate seat. He became the first
22
“Visualizations: Slave Population of U.S. States and Territories: 1790, 1820, 1860,” ManyEyes by IBM,
http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/visualizations/slave-population-of-us-states-and-te (accessed
February 6, 2009).
23
Civil Rights Division, “Introduction to Federal Voting Rights Laws,” United States Department of Justice,
http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/voting/intro/intro_a.php (accessed February 6, 2009).
24
Robert W. Johannsen, Reconstruction: 1865-1877 (New York: Free Press, 1970), pp. 89-92.
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African American in the United States Senate. Five years later, Blanche Bruce, also of
Mississippi became the body’s second black member before going on to receive some
small vice presidential consideration at the Republican’s 1880 national convention. 25
Additionally, the South sent twenty-one black senators to the House of Representatives
during Reconstruction.
Southerners remained in strong opposition extending suffrage to blacks. After the
Civil War, Union troops maintained a strong presence in the South, rendering it difficult
for law enforcement to systematically preclude black participation. In response to federal
attempts to legislate the issue, detractors formed a number of formal and informal tactical
institutions designed to forcibly prevent blacks from voting. The movement employed
fear and intimidation to keep blacks away from the polls and Republicans out of public
office.
These methods appeared to be successful, as black turnout declined and
Democrats begin to win elections by wider and wider margins. 26
The so-called
Mississippi Plan, engineered by the state’s Democratic Party, epitomizes the efforts.
White militarists raided the town of Vicksburg, a Republican bastion where blacks held
multiple elected offices, on Election Day. The insurgents murdered 300 blacks and
prevented multitudes from voting, succeeding in defeating black officials. Their tactics
were also directed at white Republicans from the North—known pejoratively as
carpetbaggers—encouraging them to either leave the South or switch political affiliation.
The insurgents called themselves the Red Shirts, and the name and the brutal tactics
would quickly spread throughout the South.
The Fifteenth Amendment granted all adult male citizens of the United States the
right to vote, regardless of race or previous condition of slavery. It allowed many
loopholes, however, permitting obstructions such as poll taxes, literacy examinations, and
property requirements to be targeted to prevent blacks from voting, tactics which would
be used to virtually squelch any black participation in government after Reconstruction.
25
Mark Bauerlein, “Review of The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of America’s First Black Dynasty,”
The Wall Street Journal, Bookshelf, July 16, 2006, http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110008641.
26
“Political Intelligence: The Mississippi Plan at Home,” The New York Times, January 1, 1877, Page 5,
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9F06E3D9133AE63BBC4953DFB766838C669FDE.
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These conditions still existed into the 1960s, when the building civil rights movement
called attention to the situation. Images of patrolmen attacking peaceful marchers and the
murders of voting rights advocates rallied concerned individuals to action, and President
Lyndon Johnson called for serious voting rights legislation in hopes that the second
clause of the Fifteenth Amendment could be employed for the first time in any serious
way in ninety years: “The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by
appropriate legislation.”
Plessy v. Ferguson
On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy was arrested for violating 1890 Louisiana Separate
Car Act. To all outward appearances a white man, Plessy was one-eighth black, and
therefore prohibited from sitting in “white only”
cars on the East Louisiana Railroad. He acted on
behalf of the Citizens' Committee to Test the
Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law, a group
of New Orleans professionals seeking to use the
courts end to the discriminatory policy.27
The
group had previously been involved in a case in
which a Louisiana district court judge John Howard
Ferguson ruled that segregation could not be
enforced on railcars traveling between states. In
this case, however, Judge Ferguson averred that a
Homer Plessy
state could indeed regulate business operating in its
own jurisdiction, including permitting segregation.28 The railcars in question traveled
exclusively within the state, and the group sought to extend bans on discrimination to
these situations.29
27
Thomas Zimmerman, “Plessy v. Ferguson,” Bowling Green State University,
http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/acs/1890s/plessy/plessy.html (accessed February 13, 2009).
28
Keith Weldon Medley, "The Sad Story of How 'Separate but Equal' Was Born," Smithsonian Magazine Feb.
1994: 106.
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The group’s legal action was led by Albion Tourgee, who orchestrated Plessy’s
arrest and processing and challenged the law at the local and state level before bringing
the case before the United States Supreme Court.
Tourgee argued that segregation
violated both the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. Tourgee asserted that forcibly
separating blacks and restricting their movements constituted a form of slavery. The law
also ran afoul of the Fourteenth Amendment, he argued. Segregation denied Plessy his
assurance of privileges and immunities and the equal protection clauses.30
The Supreme Court rejected the premise that racial discrimination in public
accommodations violated the Constitution.
States had every right to legislate
segregation, under the condition that the principle of “separate but equal” was upheld.
This legal theory posited that so long as accommodations were of roughly the same
nature and quality, blacks and whites alike could access similar facilities and goods.
Associate Justice Henry Billings Brown wrote in the majority opinion that segregation
fell outside the purview of the Constitution and federal action. “The object of the
[Fourteenth] Amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two
races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish
distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political,
equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.”31
Though the phrase “separate but equal” did not appear in the Court’s decision, it would
come to embody the spirit of the ruling and guide racial segregationist policies across
United States for over half a century.
Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan was the Court’s lone detractor. In his
famous dissent he writes, “in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in
this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our
29
Zimmerman
“Plessy v. Ferguson,” the Oyez Project, http://www.oyez.org/cases/1851-1900/1895/1895_210/.
31
“Plessy v. Ferguson (1896),” Landmark Supreme Court Cases,
http://www.landmarkcases.org/plessy/suggestions.html (accessed February 13, 2009).
30
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constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In
respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.”32
Brown v. Board of Education
In 1954, the United States Supreme Court heard Brown v. Board of Education, a
case regarding segregation in American public schools. In an effort organized by the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), thirteen African
American parents filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of their children, students in the
racially segregated Topeka elementary schools.33 Kansas law did not mandate school
segregation, but permitted the practice at the elementary level for certain large districts in
the state. The city’s middle schools and high school had been integrated since 1941 and
1871, respectively. Parents attempted to enroll their children in the city’s white schools,
partially under the pretense that these were closer to their homes, but school officials
turned them away, as expected.
For over half a century since Plessy, states had had the right to separate the races
in respect to public accommodation, and segregation continued to be rigorously enforced
throughout the United States, most notably in the South. As the civil rights movement
gained momentum, public education became a focal point of the debate over the
“separate but equal” principal enshrined in the Plessy case. Anti-segregationists claimed
the system inculcated segregation into the minds and realities of youth—both black and
white—propagating the system and forcing a sense of inferiority upon black children.
Separate schools, argued the NAACP, added spatiality to notions racial inferiority—a
very influential act for a child in the early stages of socialization. Separate schools, they
argued, helped to sustain a tradition of racial antagonism both psychologically and
geographically, as families of both races tended to settled around the schools which could
accommodate them. Furthermore, segregation had been historically in white mistrust of
blacks, not a mutual agreement to live separately. At the same time, mixing black and
32
Ibid
Ric Anderson, “Many People Part of Local Case,” The Topeka Capital Journal, May 9, 2004,
http://cjonline.com/stories/050904/04b_localcase.shtml.
33
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white children harnessed racial sentiments among white parents who viciously fought to
retain the schools as a bastion of “the Southern way of life.”34
In a unanimous ruling delivered on 17 May 1954, the Supreme Court determined
that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional and illegal in the United States.
The Court found the practice in violation of the Equal Protection Clause found in the
Fourteenth Amendment and famously stated that “separate educational facilities are
inherently unequal.” Unlike many similar cases that had gone before, the segregated
Topeka schools were actually believed to be relatively equal in quality with few if any
stark difference between them, aside from the race of students admitted. The ruling
caused a great deal of public reaction, ranging from joy, to astonishment, to defiance.
The case marked a major victory for the burgeoning civil rights movement, helping it win
the hearts and minds of many individuals who would go on to work for the cause.35
Again, it turned the nation’s attention toward the issue and helped to engender a slow
break from unchallenged segregation. Many, particularly in the South, were strongly
opposed to the ruling, and succeeded in delaying its effects. The Massive Resistance
movement, championed by Democratic Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, engineered the
closing of numerous school districts rather than leaving them open and admitting black
students. In Little Rock, Arkansas, Governor Orval Faubus used militia forces to keep
blacks from attending classes, but President Eisenhower’s decision to deploy Air Force
servicemen allowed the students entry.
The Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960
In 1957 President Eisenhower introduced what would become the first federal law
prohibiting discrimination passed in 82 years.36 The bill, pushed primarily by northern
34
David W. Southern, “Beyond Jim Crow Liberalism: Judge Waring’s Fight Against Segregation in South Carolina,
1945-52,” The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 66, No. 3 (Autumn, 1981), accessed through JSTOR,
http://www.jstor.org/.
35
“Brown v. Board of Education Decision,” Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement,
http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis54.htm#1954bvbe (accessed February 15, 2009).
36
Debora Block, “50th Anniversary Celebrated of US Civil Rights Act of 1957,” VOA News, September 26, 2007,
http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2007-09/2007-09-26-
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Republicans, came at the time of increasing civil demonstrations that captured the
attention and passions of Americans across the nation. Primarily a voting rights bill, the
act began to lay the groundwork for a broader and more intense role for the Federal
government in preventing unlawful discrimination and prosecuting those individuals who
conspired to deprive blacks of the liberties granted them as United States citizens and the
Constitution. In an official statement regarding the legislation, Attorney General Herbert
Brownwell wrote, “The right to vote is one of our most precious rights.
It is the
cornerstone of our form of government and affords protection for our other rights. It
must be safeguarded.”37
With only twenty per cent of eligible southern African
Americans registered, and a mere fraction of these casting ballots, the president attempted
to sway Congress to take new measures.
The original proposal from northern Republicans contained many clauses which
were dropped in the face of strong southern opposition. Included in the original bill was
the mandate that violators would be charged and tried before a federal jury in a district
court. Southern Democrats successfully struck this clause, leaving the cases in the
jurisdiction of state courts dominated by all-white juries which commonly acquitted the
vast majority of such cases, no matter how egregious the offense. 38 This essentially
gutted the bill, and the number of
southern black voters actually declined
slightly after its passage.
Filibuster: A parliamentary maneuver to extend
debate on a subject so long that the opposing side
abandons the question entirely.
The act also
created an entire division within the Justice Department aimed at prosecuting civil rights
offenses. Senator Strom Thurmond filibustered the bill, holding the floor for a record 27
hours, 18 minutes.39
voa42.cfm?CFID=119453067&CFTOKEN=21614275&jsessionid=663011e150791598d97d527fd4743215cd6a
(accessed February 15, 2009).
37
Herbert Brownwell, “The Civil Rights program: Letter and Statement by the Attorney General,” April 10, 1956,
http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/Research/Digital_Documents/Civil_Rights_Civil_Rights_Act/New%20PDFs/
Cabinet_Paper_CP5648310_1956_04_01.pdf (accessed February 15, 2009).
38
“Civil Rights Act 1957”, Farlex.com, http://encyclopedia.farlex.com/Civil+Rights+Act+1957
39
“Filibuster and Cloture,” the United States Senate,
http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Filibuster_Cloture.htm (accessed February 15, 2009).
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The Civil Rights Act of 1960 built upon the previous effort, strengthening federal
inspection and enforcement capabilities. The bill contained provisions which required
the federal government to dispatch overseers to monitor voter registration in areas where
it appeared the law had been historically ignored. New requirements forced states to
keep their voting records on hand for over a year should an investigable offense become
suspected.
Southern Democrats unsuccessfully filibustered the 1960 act as well,
resorting to teaming together taking turns addressing the body through a number of
nightlong sessions aimed at stopping them.
Perspectives on Civil Rights
The Eisenhower Administration
Dwight David Eisenhower succeeded Harry S. Truman and served as president
from 1953 to 1961. His two terms in office would see the continuation of the civil rights
debate, and Eisenhower played a significant role in furthering the trend towards increased
desegregation. On the heels of his predecessor’s failure to secure a civil rights bill from
Congress Eisenhower did not formally propose any civil rights legislation in his first
three years in office.40 The president believed that racial segregation was a position so
ingrained in the hearts and minds of its supporters that altering the practice would be
politically infeasible.
He stressed his position that laws and regulations were an
insufficient means to address the civil rights question, a stance likely driven in part by his
calls for a leaner, more limited central government.41
Furthermore, Eisenhower
recognized that Truman had severely compromised his relationship with southern
Democrats in Congress, and wanted to avoid jeopardizing the rest of his agenda.42 In the
first years of his administration, he declined to support congressional attempts to codify
40
Robert D. Loevy, “Introduction: The Background and Setting of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” in The Civil Rights
Act of 1964: The Passage of the Law that Ended Racial Segregation, ed. Robert Loevy, 25 (Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1997).
41
James L. Sundquist, Politics and Policy: The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Years (Washington, D.C.:
Brookings Institute Press, 1968), 224.
42
AfricanAmericans.com, “The Eisenhower Civil Rights Program,”
http://www.africanamericans.com/EisenhowerCivilRightsProgram.htm (accessed January 7, 2009).
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employment rights and desegregate travel accommodations. Commenting on the latter,
Eisenhower summed up his attitude, “I believe in progress accomplished through the
intelligence of people, and through the cooperation of people more than law, if we can
get it that way.”43
While Eisenhower shied away from seeking major legislation, he used his powers
as chief executive to accomplish his civil rights agenda. He issued numerous executive
orders to curtail and ultimately end official segregation in the District of Columbia, an
important symbolic gesture and practical victory for African Americans living in the
capital. Though President Truman officially ended segregation in the military in 1948, in
practice the custom persisted. Eisenhower rooted out these last vestiges of racial division
in the military, and the final racially segregated unit was disbanded.44 Eisenhower
became the first president to hire an African American, Frederic Morrow, to fill an
executive position at the White House.45
He supported the Supreme Court’s 1954
decision in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka and, the day after,
called on Washington, D.C. to begin integration of the public schools.
The Kennedy Administration
As the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum, John F. Kennedy rose to the
presidency. The youthful president from a wealthy and powerful Massachusetts family
was immediately faced with civil rights as a significant public issue. Coming into office,
Kennedy had a mixed record on the subject. While in the Senate, he voted against the
Civil Rights Act of 1957. Still, his campaign focused on the civil rights issue as Kennedy
pledged to issue an executive order rooting out discrimination in housing. The new
president delayed, signing an order calling for the government to eliminate discrimination
in areas relating to housing, an order many activists felt was too narrow in scope.46 This
43
Dwight Eisenhower, News conference, June 16, 1954, Public Papers of the President, 1954, 48.
Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission, “Dwight D. Eisenhower and Civil Rights,” Dwight D. Eisenhower
Memorial Commission, http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/Civil-Rights.htm (accessed January 8, 2009).
45
The White House Historical Association, “E. Frederic Morrow,” The White House Historical Association,
http://www.whitehousehistory.org/05/subs/05_c17.html (accessed January 8, 2009).
46
Carl M. Brauer, http://www.lexisnexis.com/documents/academic/upa_cis/1348_CivRtsKennedyPt%201-1.pdf
44
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tempered approach of Kennedy’s early years disheartened activists who felt that a
popular new president would quickly synch with their movement’s rising energy and
compel strong government action.
Holding President Kennedy back were the same perceptions of political reality
that hampered his predecessors. For fear of compromising the rest of his legislative
agenda, he felt pushing radical civil rights initiatives upon the Congress would be
ineffective and spoil his chances of winning other important battles. The congressional
balance of power presented a harrowing obstacle. Southern Democrats chaired twelve of
the Senate’s eighteen committees and twelve of the House’s twenty-one. In Congress
committee chairmen wield significant power, particularly through their power to keep
bills mired in committee, denying them a chance at debate or a vote on the floor. While
Kennedy was seemingly sympathetic to the cause of racial equality his lack of initial
action combined with perceptions on the part of some that because of his background he
represented a wealthy, elitist perspective.
The Civil Rights Movement
The famed Twentieth Century Civil Rights movement was by no means the first
organized citizen’s effort to eliminate legally sanctioned discrimination. Movements for
black liberation and equality are as old as the United States, if not older. The National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People is among the oldest and prominent
civil rights organizations in the United States. The organization has played a consistent
role in the arena of African American civil rights since its official incorporation in 1911.
Its charter delineates the essence of the association’s principled stance: “To promote
equality of rights and to eradicate caste or race prejudice among the citizens of the United
States; to advance the interest of colored citizens; to secure for them impartial suffrage;
and to increase their opportunities for securing justice in the courts, education for the
children, employment according to their ability and complete equality before law.”47
47
Brian Gilmore, “The NAACP Celebrates 100 Years,” The Progressive, February 10, 2009,
http://www.progressive.org/mag/mpgilmore021009.html (accessed February 13, 2009).
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From its inception, the NAACP and all civil rights activists faced considerable
societal, legal, and institutional challenges. The right to vote was effectively non-existent
in the South where blacks faced an ever-present threat of violence and intimidation at the
hands of white groups aimed at preventing their collective rise. Indeed, a 1908 race riot
in Springfield, Illinois, catalyzed the formation of the organization by blacks and whites
committed to ending cycles of violence and segregation.
The NAACP quickly grew into a nationwide organization, while still working
heavily at the local level. Legal advocacy became a cornerstone of NAACP action, and a
series of early court wins helped propel the organization into a prominent spotlight. They
engineered a case that overturned an Oklahoma law implementing a ‘Grandfather Clause’
on voting rights. In an astounding growth spurt, membership swelled from 9,000 in 1917
to 90,000 only two years later, when the group claimed some 300 local branches.48 Many
credit the NAACP with raising public awareness of issues such as intimidation and
lynching. They worked against and helped block the Herbert Hoover nomination of an
openly pro-segregationist judge to the Supreme Court.49 Thurgood Marshall, an NAACP
attorney, helped orchestrate and litigated the Brown v. Board of Education case which
ended the legal basis for school segregation.
Some during the civil rights movements looked down on the NAACP, criticizing
the group for being beholden to the American legal system. While other groups were
actively working against laws and institutions—whether by boycotting, protesting,
exercising civil disobedience, or even taking violent action—the NAACP predominantly
limited itself to working within the legal system and lobbying executives and Congress to
achieve their goals.50
They did, however, work with some more proactive groups,
helping to coordinate 1963 civil rights focused March on Washington and posting bail for
individuals arrested as part of the Freedom Rider movement in the Deep South.
48
“History,” NAACP, http://www.naacp.org/about/history/ (accessed February 13, 2009).
Ibid
50
Ibid
49
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The Twentieth Century Civil Rights Movement, which began in 1955 with the
boycott of segregated busses in Montgomery, Alabama, is best remembered for its
enormously successful use of nonviolent civil disobedience as a public relations tool, to
bring awareness and urgency to their cause. Groups such as the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, led by the
Martin Luther King, organized widely publicized marches and protests intended to create
pressure on legislators. The Civil Rights Movement also had a large number of members
who thought that segregation would “have to be bitterly fought, and not always with
nonviolence.”51
As the non-violent Civil Rights movement gathered steam, a
corresponding movement advocating self-defense—with guns, not lawyers—took shape.
These two movements—one peaceful and one violent—more than any other force helped
to spur on Congressional action on matters of Civil Rights.
51
Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New York: Perenial Classics, 2003), 452.
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Discussion Questions
• The Civil Rights debate of the 1950s and 1960s focused primarily on race. What
other forms of civil rights have been discussed through American history? Under
what circumstances – and to what ends – might these have been addressed during
the period?
• Where does Federal authority to intervene in state matters begin and end? What
justifications did proponents of federal legislation on civil rights put forward?
What answer did their opponents offer?
• What role did President’s play in bringing about or deterring civil rights policies?
• What did post-Civil War Reconstruction aim to accomplish? Was it successful
while it lasted and why did it come to an end? What other ways Reconstruction
have been approached?
• What foundational and institutional practices of the United States Congress,
particularly the Senate, weighed on the question of civil rights legislation?
• What different methods did those involved in the civil rights movement employ?
How did the movement shape the debate and help form public opinion?
• What lessons can be learned from the ultimate failure of federal efforts to legislate
racial equality?
• Can any distinction be drawn between legal rights –such as due process,
citizenship, and suffrage – and social equality?
• What demographics, advocacy groups, political parties, and electoral influences
shaped the way the senator you will represent’s views on civil rights and the
Federal government’s role?
• What were the roles of the major political parties in this era? To whom did they
owe their support? How did the parties differ in the North and the South and what
impact did such differences have?
• What actions did the senator you are representing take on the Senate floor in
debates on civil rights? Note any votes, proposed amendments, speeches, and
tactical maneuverings. What impact might a leadership position have had on these
actions?
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