Civil Rights Act Of 1866 Essay

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The Civil Right Act of 1866 and the Quest for Equality The Civil Rights Act of 1866 passed by Congress, despite President Andrew Johnson’s veto, on April 9, 1866 was a victory for civic equality for blacks who had been emancipated after the Civil War. This act guaranteed citizenship for all persons born in the United States published under the full title “An Act to protect all persons in the United States in their Civil Rights, and furnish a means of their Vindication.” According to Bracey, the purpose of this act was to “integrate blacks into mainstream American Society, define the rights of American Citizenship, and make it unlawful to deprive a person of any of these rights of citizenship on the basis of race, color, or prior condition…show more content…
Blacks in the South did not experience the fruits of this Civil Rights Act and it would require much more legislation in their struggle for equality. In the South, black’s rights were denied through intimidation, violence and legislation passed by states as a result of Reconstruction for many years to come. Jim Crow Laws passed in the south separated blacks from whites in schools and public transportation. Black segregation would continue and be affirmed through Plessy v. Ferguson (Spring, 2013). The Fourteenth Amendment was passed in response to these laws, which according to Wormser, “prohibited states from denying or abridging the privileges or immunities of citizens of the U.S., depriving any person of his life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or denying to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” (Wormser, 2002). While this Act was passed to afford blacks the full rights as citizens, according to Koppelman, it would be two decades of Supreme Court decisions following the passage of this Act to fully transform the “Jim Crow” south (Koppelman, 2014). The Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954,
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