Civil Rights Act of 1875

Civil Rights Act of 1875

Long title	An act to protect all citizens in their civil and legal rights.
Acronyms (colloquial)	CRA 1875
Nicknames	Enforcement Act, Force Act, and Sumner Civil Rights Bill
Enacted by	the 43rd United States Congress
Citations
Statutes at Large	18 Stat. 335-337
Legislative history
Introduced in the Senate as S. 1 by Sen. Charles Sumner (R-MA) on May 13, 1870[1] Committee consideration by Senate Judiciary Passed the House on February 4, 1875 (162–99) Passed the Senate on February 27, 1875 (38–26) Signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1875
United States Supreme Court cases
The Civil Rights Cases (1883)

The Civil Rights Act of 1875 (18 Stat. 335–337),^[2] sometimes called Enforcement Act or Force Act, was a United States federal law enacted during the Reconstruction Era to guarantee African Americans equal treatment in public accommodations, public transportation, and to prohibit exclusion from jury service. The bill was passed by the 43rd United States Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1875. Several years later, the Supreme Court ruled in Civil Rights Cases (1883) that sections of the act were unconstitutional.

History of Act

Legislative History

The drafting of the bill was performed early in 1870 by Senator Charles Sumner, a dominant Radical Republican in the Senate, with the assistance of John Mercer Langston, a prominent African American who established the law department at Howard University.^[3] The bill was proposed by Senator Sumner and co-sponsored by Representative Benjamin F. Butler, both Republicans from Massachusetts, in the 41st Congress of the United States in 1870. The act was finally passed by the 43rd Congress in February 1875 and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1875.^[4]

Constitutional challenge

The Supreme Court, in a 7-1 decision, declared the act unconstitutional in the Civil Rights Cases on October 15, 1883.

Ulysses S. Grant 18th President of the United States (1869–1877) Commanding General of the United States Army 1865-1869 Life and politics Early life and career Birth Place Boyhood home Grant Schoolhouse Point Pleasant, Ohio Grant Home Military Career Military Service Commanding General of the United States Army American Civil War Battle of Shiloh Battle of Appomattox Court House Campaigns Vicksburg Campaign Chattanooga Campaign Overland Campaign Petersburg Campaign Appomattox Campaign General of the Army Reconstruction Era Presidency First Term First inauguration Scandals Reforms Peace Policy Department of Justice XV Amendment Treaty of Washington Korean Expedition Pardons Cabinet State of the Union addresses 1869 1870 1871 1872 Second Term Reelection Second inauguration Comstock Laws Panic of 1873 Civil Rights Act Modoc War Great Sioux War Judicial Appointments State of the Union addresses 1873 1874 1875 1876 Elections Republican National Convention, 1868 United States presidential election, 1868 Republican National Convention, 1872 United States presidential election, 1872 Post-presidency Later life of Ulysses S. Grant Bid for a Third Term Legacy Bibliography Personal Memoirs Grant's Tomb Grant Memorial presidential library General Grant (ship) General Grant (tree) Grant Cottage State Historic Site Lee and Grant at Appomattox The Peacemakers Cultural depictions postage stamps currency $50 Bill Grant High School Family Hannah Grant (mother) Julia Grant (wife) Frederick Dent Grant (son) Ulysses S. Grant Jr. (son) Jesse Root Grant (son) Nellie Grant (daughter) Ulysses S. Grant III (grandson) Chapman Grant (grandson) Ulysses S. Grant IV (grandson) Julia Dent Cantacuzène Spiransky-Grant (granddaughter) Ulysses S. Grant V (great-grandson) Cincinnati (horse) Category Wikibooks Wikiquote Wikisource texts

• Benjamin F. Butler, "Civil Rights: Speech of Hon. Benjamin F. Butler, of Massachusetts, in the House of Representatives, January 7, 1874," From the Digital Archive Collections of the Mount St. Mary's University. Retrieved October 15, 2014
• , The Fifteenth Amendment in Flesh and Blood: Legislative Interests"Civil Rights Bill of 1875" Provides a detailed description of the history of the bill from 1870 until its passage by Congress in 1875. Retrieved November 18, 2012
• , Prologue: Pieces of History, The National Archives.govHistory Crush: Charles Sumner Provides a short biographical account of Sen. Charles Sumner including details surrounding his efforts to pass the Civil Rights bill in Congress. Includes images of Sumner, personal documents, and bill S. 1 that would later lead to the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Retrieved November 18, 2012
• Summary of Constitutional Amendments and Major Civil Rights Acts passed by Congress Part of the Black Americans in Congress, 1870–2007 series. Provided by the Office of History and Preservation under the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives. Retrieved November 18, 2012
• "The Trouble has Commenced - A Tale of Anxiety" by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly. From the New York Times "On This Day" series. Recounts the events on the floor of the House in the United States Congress involving the Civil Rights Bill on February 27, 1875. Retrieved March 16, 2013
• "How Some People Regard the Passage of the Civil Rights Bill" Published in the Daily Graphic on March 3, 1875. From the The Old Fulton website. Presents a detractors view on the outcome of the Civil Right Bill. Retrieved July 5, 2014
• Digitized image of Charles Sumners' senate bill S. 1 as introduced during the 43rd United States Congress. From the Records of the U.S. House of Representatives. Retrieved May 18, 2015
• "Some Memories of A Long Life" An excerpt from the memoir of Malvina Shanklin Harlan, the wife of Justice John Marshall Harlan. The excerpt chronicles the effort that Justice Harlan placed into writing an opinion for the Civil Rights Cases (1883). From the Library of Congress. Retrieved May 18, 2015

Other

• Congressional Record: Congressional Globe (1833-1873) Provides an index to the "History of Senate Bills and Joint Resolutions" for Senate bill S. 1 during 1873. Retrieved November 18, 2012
• Congressional Record: House Proceedings, 1874 Provides an index to the "History of Senate Bills and Joint Resolutions" for House bill H.R. 796 during 1874. Retrieved November 18, 2012

Congressional Records

External links

• Avins, Alfred (May 1966). "The Civil Rights Act of 1875: Some Reflected Light on the Fourteenth Amendment and Public Accommodations". Columbia Law Review 66: 873–915.  
• Franklin, John Hope (Winter 1974). "The Enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1875" (PDF).  
• Gudridge, Patrick O. (April 1989). "Privileges and Permissions: The Civil Rights Act of 1875". Law and Philosophy 8 (1): 83–130.  
• Jager, Ronald B. (September 1969). "Charles Sumner, the Constitution, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875". The New England Quarterly 42 (3): 350–372.  
• McPherson, James M. (December 1965). "Abolitionists and the Civil Rights Act of 1875". Journal of American History 52 (3). 
• Murphy, L.E. (April 1927). "The Civil Rights Law of 1875". Journal of Negro History 12 (2). 
• Spackman, S. G. F. (December 1976). "American Federalism and the Civil Rights Act of 1875". Journal of American Studies 10 (3): 313–328.  
• Weaver, Valeria W. (October 1969). "The Failure of Civil Rights 1875–1883 and its Repercussions". The Journal of Negro History 54 (4): 368–382.  
• Wyatt-Brown, Bertram (December 1965). "The Civil Rights Act of 1875". Western Political Quarterly 18 (4): 763–765.  

Journals

• Atwell, Mary Welek (2012). Wilbur R. Miller, ed. Civil Rights Act of 1875. The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America: An Encyclopedia (SAGE). pp. 262–263.  
• Bitzer, J. Michael (2006).  
• Howard, John R. (1999). The Shifting Wind: The Supreme Court and Civil Rights from Reconstruction to Brown. New York: State University of New York Press. pp. 66–68.  
• Luckett, Barbara N. (1972). The Civil Rights Act of 1875: A Failure Reconsidered. University of Nebraska at Omaha. 
• Rivera, Alicia (2006). Paul Finkelman, ed. Civil Rights Act of 1875. Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From The Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass, vol. 1, A-E (New York: Oxford University Press). pp. 285–287.  
• Sandoval-Strausz, A. K. (2007). "Accommodating Jim Crow: The Law of Hospitality and the Struggle for Civil Rights". Hotel: An American History. Yale University Press. pp. 284–311.  
• Tsesis, Alexander (2010). ""Badges and Incidents of Slavery" In the Supreme Court". The Promises of Liberty: The History and Contemporary Relevance of the Thirteenth Amendment. Columbia University Press. pp. 172–181.  
• Wilson, Kirt H. (2002). The Reconstruction Desegregation Debate: The Politics of Equality and the Rhetoric of Place, 1870-1875. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.  
• Wynn, Linda T. (2009). Jessie Carney Smith, Linda T. Wynn, ed. Civil Rights Act of 1875. Freedom Facts and Firsts: 400 Years of the African American Civil Rights Experience (Visible Ink Press). pp. 165–167.  

Books

Further reading

References

• Racial inequality in the United States

See also

Provisions contained in the Civil Rights Act of 1875 were later adopted by Congress during the Civil Rights Movement as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. This legislation relied on the Commerce Clause contained in Article One of the Constitution of the United States.

The Civil Rights Act of 1875 is notable as one of the major pieces of legislation related to Reconstruction that were passed by Congress after the American Civil War. These include the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the four Reconstruction Acts of 1867 and 1868, the three Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871, and the three Constitutional Amendments adopted between 1865 and 1870.^[6]

Legacy of law

. Civil Rights Act of 1957 until the passage of the United States was meant to eliminate "the badge of slavery," but not to prohibit racial discrimination in public accommodations. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was the last civil rights bill to be signed into law in the Thirteenth Amendment The Court also held that the [5]