⚖️ Section 1: What Are Civil Rights and How Do We Identify Them?

The belief that people should be treated equally under the law is one of the cornerstones of political thought in the United States. Yet not all citizens have been treated equally throughout the nation's history, and some are treated differently even today. For example, until 1920, nearly all women in the United States lacked the right to vote. Black men received the right to vote in 1870, but as late as 1940, only 3 percent of African American adults living in the South were registered to vote, due largely to laws designed to keep them from the polls. Americans were not allowed to enter into legal marriage with a member of the same sex in many U.S. states until 2015.

Some types of unequal treatment are considered acceptable in some contexts, while others are clearly not. No one would consider it acceptable to allow a ten-year-old to vote, because a child lacks the ability to understand important political issues, but all reasonable people would agree that it is wrong to mandate racial segregation or to deny someone voting rights on the basis of race. It is important to understand which types of inequality are unacceptable and why.

Defining Civil Rights

The due process clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution enacted the Declaration of Independence's proclamation that "all men are created equal" by providing de jure equal treatment under the law. According to Chief Justice Earl Warren in the Supreme Court case of Bolling v. Sharpe (1954), "discrimination may be so unjustifiable as to be violative of due process."

Additional guarantees of equality were provided in 1868 by the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states, in part, that "No State shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Thus, between the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, neither state governments nor the federal government may treat people unequally unless unequal treatment is necessary to maintain important governmental interests such as public safety.

According to the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause, "all persons similarly circumstanced shall be treated alike." If people are not similarly circumstanced, however, they may be treated differently. Asian Americans and Latinos overstaying a visa are similarly circumstanced; however, a blind driver or a ten-year-old driver is differently circumstanced than a sighted, adult driver.

Identifying Discrimination

Laws that treat one group of people differently from others are not always unconstitutional. In fact, the government engages in legal discrimination quite often. In most states, you must be eighteen years old to smoke cigarettes and twenty-one to drink alcohol; these laws discriminate against the young. To get a driver's license, you have to be a minimum age and pass tests showing your knowledge, practical skills, and vision.

Some public colleges and universities have an open admission policy, but others require that students have a high school diploma or a particular score on the SAT or ACT. This is discrimination, because these requirements treat people who do not meet them differently. How can the government discriminate in all these ways even though the equal protection clause seems to suggest that everyone be treated the same?

Intermediate Scrutiny

The standard of intermediate scrutiny was first applied by the Supreme Court in Craig v. Boren (1976) and again in Clark v. Jeter (1988). It requires the government to demonstrate that treating men and women differently is "substantially related to an important governmental objective." This puts the burden of proof on the government to demonstrate why the unequal treatment is justifiable.

In practice, laws that treat men and women differently are sometimes upheld, although usually they are not. In the 1980s and 1990s, the courts ruled that states could not operate single-sex institutions of higher education and that schools like South Carolina's military college The Citadel must admit both male and female students. Women in the military are now also allowed to serve in all combat roles, although the courts have continued to allow the Selective Service System (the draft) to register only men.

Strict Scrutiny

Discrimination against members of racial, ethnic, or religious groups or those of various national origins is reviewed to the greatest degree by the courts. Under strict scrutiny, the burden of proof is on the government to demonstrate:

• A compelling governmental interest in treating people differently
• The law can be narrowly tailored to achieve the goal
• It is the least restrictive means available to achieve that goal

In the modern era, laws challenged under strict scrutiny have rarely been upheld. However, strict scrutiny was the legal basis for the Supreme Court's 1944 upholding of Japanese American internment during World War II.

Putting Civil Rights in the Constitution

At the time of the nation's founding, the treatment of many groups was unequal: the rights of women were decidedly fewer than those of men, and neither they, the hundreds of thousands of enslaved people of African descent, nor indigenous Americans were considered fully human, let alone U.S. citizens. While the early United States was perhaps a more inclusive society than most of the world at that time, equal treatment of all remained a radical idea.

To override the southern states' actions, lawmakers proposed the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The Fourteenth Amendment included the equal protection clause and was designed to ensure states would respect freed people's civil liberties. The Fifteenth Amendment secured the right to vote for Black men.

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✊ Section 2: The African American Struggle for Equality

Many groups in U.S. history have sought recognition as equal citizens. Although each group's efforts have been notable and important, arguably the greatest, longest, and most violent struggle remains that of African Americans, whose dehumanization was even written into the text of the Constitution in the clause counting them as three-fifths of a person. Their fight for freedom and equality provided the legal and moral foundation for others who sought recognition of their equality later on.

Slavery and the Civil War

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson made the radical statement that "all men are created equal" and "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Yet, like other wealthy landowners of his time, Jefferson also owned dozens of other human beings as his personal property. He recognized this contradiction, personally considered the institution of slavery to be a "hideous blot" on the nation, and agreed to free those he held in bondage upon his death.

However, to forge a political union that would stand the test of time, he and the other founders—and later the framers of the Constitution—chose not to address the issue in any definitive way. Political support for abolition was very much a minority stance in the United States at the time, although after the Revolution many northern states abolished slavery following the European example.

Ultimately, the issue was decided by the Civil War (1861–1865), with the southern states seceding to defend "states' rights"—specifically, the purported right to own human property without federal interference. Although at the beginning of the war, President Abraham Lincoln had been willing to allow slavery to continue in the South to preserve the Union, he changed his policies over the course of the war.

Reconstruction (1865-1877)

At the end of the Civil War, the South entered Reconstruction during which state governments were reorganized before rebellious states were readmitted to the Union. The Republican Party pushed for a permanent end to slavery through constitutional amendments:

Jim Crow and "Separate But Equal"

With Black people effectively disenfranchised, restored southern state governments undermined Fourteenth Amendment guarantees. They passed laws that:

• Excluded African Americans from juries
• Allowed imprisonment and forced labor of "idle" Black citizens
• Called for segregation of White and Black people in public places under the "separate but equal" doctrine
• Limited neighborhoods where Black and White people could live

Collectively, these discriminatory laws became known as Jim Crow laws. The Supreme Court upheld separate but equal in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), allowing segregation to continue despite the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause.

Civil Rights in the Courts

By the turn of the twentieth century, the position of African Americans was bleak. African American leaders disagreed on the right path forward:

The NAACP focused on overturning Jim Crow laws through the courts, particularly challenging segregation in education. In 1938, the Supreme Court gave states a choice: integrate higher education institutions or establish equivalent ones for African Americans. Southern states chose to establish separate colleges rather than integrate.

Integration was controversial. While it took place without much incident in some areas, elsewhere it was confrontational—or nonexistent. In September 1957, Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas resisted court-ordered integration, mobilizing National Guard troops to keep Black students out of Central High School in Little Rock. President Eisenhower called up the Arkansas National Guard for federal duty and sent soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division to escort the "Little Rock Nine" students to and from classes.

In Virginia, "massive resistance" led to closure of many public schools for years. Many White southerners established private academies that admitted only White students; many remain overwhelmingly White today.

The Civil Rights Movement

The slow rate of progress led to frustration. Newer grassroots organizations challenged the NAACP's legal-focused strategy:

• Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
• Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
• Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

These groups preferred confrontational approaches using direct action campaigns—marches and demonstrations. The strategies of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience (refusal to obey unjust laws) had been effective in Mahatma Gandhi's campaign to liberate colonial India from British rule.

Legislative Achievements

Alternative Approaches and Continuing Challenges

Not all African Americans were comfortable with gradual change. Leaders like Malcolm X and groups like the Black Panthers advocated more immediate action. Malcolm X expressed significant distrust of White people, sought to raise Black self-esteem, and advocated separation through eventual emigration to Africa. He laid the foundation for the Black Power movement, which sought self-determination and independence for Black people.

Racial profiling—singling out Black (and Latino) people for greater police attention—remains a serious problem. When incidents of real or perceived injustice arise, as occurred in Ferguson, Missouri; Staten Island, New York; Baltimore, Maryland; Louisville, Kentucky; and Minneapolis, Minnesota, many African Americans turn to the streets to protest.

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👩 Section 3: The Fight for Women's Rights

Along with African Americans, women of all races and ethnicities have long been discriminated against in the United States, and the women's rights movement began at the same time as the movement to abolish slavery. Indeed, the women's movement came about largely as a result of difficulties women encountered while trying to abolish slavery.

The Early Women's Rights Movement

At the time of the American Revolution, women had few rights. Although single women were allowed to own property, married women were not.

Following the Revolution, women's conditions did not improve. Women were not granted the right to vote by any state except New Jersey, which at first allowed all taxpaying property owners to vote—but in 1807, the law changed to limit the vote to men.

Along with other feminists like her friend Susan B. Anthony, Stanton fought for rights beyond suffrage, including the right to seek higher education. Their efforts led several states to pass laws allowing married women to retain property control and divorced women to keep custody of their children.

Prominent Black and formerly enslaved women such as Sojourner Truth, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Mary Anne Shadd Cary joined the movement after establishing themselves as key figures in abolition. Truth's "Ain't I A Woman" speech is among the most well known of the movement.

The Fight for Suffrage

Following the Civil War, the women's rights movement fragmented. Stanton and Anthony denounced the Fifteenth Amendment because it granted voting rights only to Black men, not to women of any race.

The more radical National Woman's Party held public protests and picketed outside the White House. Demonstrators were often beaten and arrested. When some, like Alice Paul, began hunger strikes, their jailers force-fed them—an incredibly painful and invasive experience.

Finally, in 1920, the triumphant passage of the Nineteenth Amendment granted all women the right to vote.

Civil Rights and the Equal Rights Amendment

The Nineteenth Amendment did not end discrimination in education, employment, or other areas of life. Women continued to be underrepresented in professions, and relatively few sought advanced degrees. The ideal was for women to marry, have children, and become housewives. Those who sought outside work were routinely denied jobs and paid less than men.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited employment discrimination based on sex as well as race, color, national origin, and religion. In 1966, feminists angered by lack of progress organized the National Organization for Women (NOW), which promoted workplace equality and greater presence of women in public office.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 applies to all educational institutions receiving federal aid and prohibits discrimination based on sex in academic programs, dormitory space, health-care access, and school activities including sports.

Continuing Challenges for Women

Women have made great progress since Seneca Falls. Today, more women than men attend college and are more likely to graduate. Women are represented in all professions, and approximately half of all law and medical school students are women. Women have held Cabinet positions, been elected to Congress, run for president and vice president, and four female justices currently serve on the Supreme Court.

Women remain subject to sexual harassment in the workplace and are more likely than men to be victims of domestic violence. Approximately one-third of all women have experienced domestic violence; one in five women is assaulted during her college years.

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🪶 Section 4: Civil Rights for Indigenous Groups

Native Americans have long suffered the effects of segregation and discrimination imposed by the U.S. government and the larger White society. Native Americans were not granted the full rights and protections of U.S. citizenship until long after African Americans and women were, with many having to wait until the Nationality Act of 1940 to become citizens.

This was long after the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, which granted citizenship to African Americans but not, the Supreme Court decided in Elk v. Wilkins (1884), to Native Americans. Furthermore, Native Americans are the only group forcibly removed en masse from the lands on which they and their ancestors had lived.

Native Americans Lose Their Land and Rights

From the very beginning of European settlement in North America, Native Americans were abused and exploited. Early British settlers attempted to enslave members of various tribes, especially in the southern colonies. Following the American Revolution, the U.S. government assumed responsibility for conducting negotiations with Indian tribes, all designated as sovereign nations, and regulating commerce with them. Because Native Americans were officially regarded as citizens of other nations, they were denied U.S. citizenship.

As White settlement spread westward, Indian tribes were forced from their homelands. Although the federal government signed numerous treaties guaranteeing rights to live in traditional places, land-hungry White settlers routinely violated these agreements and the federal government did little to enforce them.

By the Civil War, most Indian tribes had been relocated west of the Mississippi. However, once large numbers of White Americans and European immigrants moved west after the Civil War, Native Americans were again displaced. They were confined to reservations—federal lands set aside for their use where non-Indians could not settle. Reservation land was usually poor, and attempts to farm or raise livestock often failed.

In 1898, the Curtis Act dealt the final blow to Indian sovereignty by abolishing all tribal governments.

The Fight for Native American Rights

As Native Americans were removed from tribal lands and saw their cultures destroyed, a movement to protect their rights began to grow. Sarah Winnemucca (Paiute) lectured throughout the east in the 1880s to acquaint White audiences with injustices. Lakota physician Charles Eastman also worked for Native American rights.

Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians

Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians endured many of the same abuses. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (1971) gave Alaska Natives 44 million acres of resource-rich land and more than $900 million in cash in exchange for relinquishing claims to ancestral lands.

Native Hawaiians lost control of nearly two million acres through the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 and formal U.S. annexation in 1898. In September 2015, the U.S. Department of Interior created guidelines for Native Hawaiians who wish to govern themselves in a relationship with the federal government similar to Native American tribes.

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🌈 Section 5: Equal Protection for Other Groups

Many groups in American society have faced and continue to face challenges in achieving equality. Some are overlooked because they are not as large a percentage of the U.S. population, and organized movements to achieve equality for them are relatively young. This does not mean the discrimination they face has not been as longstanding or severe.

Hispanic/Latino Civil Rights

Many Latinos became part of the U.S. population following the annexation of Texas (1845) and California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado after the War with Mexico (1848). Most were subject to discrimination and could find employment only as poorly paid migrant workers, railroad workers, and unskilled laborers.

In the 1960s, the Mexican American civil rights movement grew stronger and more radical. Young activists called for Brown Power and began referring to themselves as Chicanos to stress pride in their hybrid Spanish-Native American identity. Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta founded the United Farm Workers (UFW) in 1962 and led strikes and boycotts, including the 1965-1970 grape boycott.

Asian American Civil Rights

Often stereotyped as the "model minority," Asian Americans have long faced discrimination. The Chinese were the first large group to immigrate, arriving in the mid-nineteenth century to work in mining and on the Central Pacific Railroad.

During World War II, citizens of Japanese descent living on the West Coast—whether naturalized immigrants or Japanese Americans born in the United States—were removed from their communities and interned under Executive Order 9066. Although Italians and Germans suspected of disloyalty were also interned, only the Japanese were imprisoned solely on the basis of their ethnicity.

None of the more than 110,000 Japanese and Japanese American internees was ever found to have committed a disloyal act. In Korematsu v. United States (1944), the Supreme Court upheld the government's actions as a necessary wartime precaution. When internees returned after the war, many found their houses, cars, and businesses had been sold or destroyed.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, hate crimes against Asian Americans increased 150 percent in 2020 and rose over 800 percent in New York City.

LGBTQ Civil Rights

Laws against same-sex relations existed in most states throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By the late nineteenth century, homosexuality was regarded as mental illness and sin. Lesbian women, gay men, bisexual people, and transgender people had to keep their orientation "closeted."

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (1994-2011) prohibited military discrimination against gay, lesbian, and bisexual people but also prohibited them from speaking openly about their orientation. Now they may serve openly. Transgender people were banned from military service in 1960; the ban was lifted in 2016, reinstated, then removed again by the Biden administration in 2021. Upon taking office in 2025, President Trump signed an executive order reinstating the ban; a judge has blocked enforcement.

Civil Rights for People with Disabilities

People with disabilities were long denied employment and access to public education. Many were institutionalized. A eugenics movement sought to discourage reproduction among those with disabilities. Many states passed laws prohibiting marriage among people with "hereditary defects" and had programs to sterilize people considered "feeble minded" without consent.

In Buck v. Bell (1927), the Supreme Court upheld states' right to sterilize those believed likely to have children who would become dependent on public welfare. Some programs persisted into the 1970s.

Rights of Religious Minorities

Anti-Catholicism was common from the early nineteenth century, with Catholic immigrants denied jobs. Anti-Mormon sentiment led to violence, including the 1844 murder of LDS founder Joseph Smith. Jewish Americans faced discrimination in employment, education, and housing, with restrictive covenants and "gentlemen's agreements" limiting university admissions.

Jewish people or property are the most frequent targets of hate crimes motivated by religious bias. Muslims have experienced a rise in discrimination and hate crimes, with many believing they are subject to racial profiling. Many Christians have argued they are being deprived of rights because of their religious beliefs—as in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (2014), where the Supreme Court ruled a company's health plan need not cover contraception if the owner's religious beliefs oppose it.

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