The Black Minority

The status of the black minority in the United States was one of the crucial civil rights issue concerning the American nation. After the Civil War the former slaves' status as free people entitled to the rights of citizenship was established by the 13th and 14th Amendments, ratified in 1865 and 1868, respectively. The 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, prohibited race, color, or previous condition of servitude as grounds for denying or abridging the rights of citizens to vote. In addition to these constitutional provisions, Congress enacted several statutes defining civil rights more particularly. The Supreme Court, however, held several of these unconstitutional, including an 1875 act prohibiting racial discrimination by innkeepers, public transportation providers, and places of amusement.

Although during the Reconstruction black people either became senators or were elected in the House of Representatives, in the last two decades of the 19th century, blacks in the South were subject to discriminatory legislation and unlawful violence. Separate facilities for whites and blacks became a basic rule in southern society.

During the first half of the 20th century, racial exclusion, either overt or covert, was practiced in most areas of American life. During World War II (1939-1945) black leaders such as A. Philip Randolph protested segregation in military service, and some reforms were introduced. In 1948 President Harry S. Truman signed an executive order integrating the armed forces. The 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education represented a turning point; the Court held that compulsory segregation in public schools denied black children equal protection under the law. Subsequent decisions outlawed racial exclusion or discrimination in all government facilities. Federal laws barring discrimination in interstate commerce, such as public transportation were introduced. A state law against racial intermarriage was also ruled invalid.

School desegregation was resisted in the South.

Federal determination to enforce the court decision was demonstrated in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, when President Dwight Eisenhower dispatched troops to secure admission of black students into a “white” high school. Nevertheless, in the Deep South progress toward integration was negligible in the years following the Supreme Court decision. In 1966, for example, the overwhelming majority of southern schools remained segregated. By 1974, however, some 44 percent of black students in the South attended integrated schools, and by the early 1980s the number was approximately 80 percent.

Civil rights for blacks became a major national political issue in the 1950s. The first federal civil rights law since the Reconstruction period was enacted in 1957. It called for the establishment of a U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and authorized the U.S. attorney general to enforce voting rights. In 1960 this legislation was strengthened, and in 1964 a more sweeping civil rights bill outlawed racial discrimination in public accommodations and by employers, unions, and voting registrars. Deciding that normal judicial procedures were too slow in assuring minority registration and voting, Congress passed a voting rights bill in 1965. The law suspended (and amendments later banned) use of literacy or other voter-qualification tests that had sometimes served to keep blacks off voting lists, authorized appointment of federal voting examiners in areas not meeting certain voter-participation requirements, and provided for federal court suits to bar discriminatory poll taxes, which were ended by a Supreme Court decision and the 24th Amendment (ratified in 1964). In the aftermath of the assassination of the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., Congress in 1968 prohibited racial discrimination in federally financed housing, but later efforts to strengthen the law failed.   [UP]

"There are two types of laws: there are just laws and there are unjust laws...What is the difference between the two?...An unjust law is a man-made code that is out of harmony with the moral law...Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Isn't segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, an expression of his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness?"

Martin Luther King, Jr. 1963