The Civil Rights Act of 1866 (, enacted April 9, 1866, reenacted 1870) was the first
United States federal law
The law of the United States comprises many levels of codified and uncodified forms of law, of which the most important is the nation's Constitution, which prescribes the foundation of the federal government of the United States, as well as va ...
to define citizenship and affirm that all citizens are equally protected by the law. It was mainly intended, in the wake of the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...
, to protect the
civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life of ...
of persons of African descent born in or brought to the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
.
Civil Rights Act of 1866
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 (, enacted April 9, 1866, reenacted 1870) was the first United States federal law to define citizenship and affirm that all citizens are equally protected by the law. It was mainly intended, in the wake of the Amer ...
The Act was passed by
Congress
A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of a ...
in 1866 and vetoed by
United States President
The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United State ...
Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808July 31, 1875) was the 17th president of the United States, serving from 1865 to 1869. He assumed the presidency as he was vice president at the time of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Johnson was a Dem ...
. In April 1866, Congress again passed the bill to support the
Thirteenth Amendment, and Johnson again vetoed it, but a two-thirds majority in each chamber overrode the veto to allow it to become law without presidential signature.
John Bingham
John Armor Bingham (January 21, 1815 – March 19, 1900) was an American politician who served as a Republican representative from Ohio and as the United States ambassador to Japan. In his time as a congressman, Bingham served as both assist ...
and other congressmen argued that Congress did not yet have sufficient constitutional power to enact this law. Following passage of the
Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, Congress ratified the 1866 Act in 1870.
Primary objectives, introduction and amendment
The act had three primary objectives for the integration of
African Americans
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
into the American society following the Civil War: 1.) a definition of American citizenship 2.) the rights which come with this citizenship and 3.) the unlawfulness to deprive any person of citizenship rights "on the basis of race, color, or prior condition of slavery or involuntary servitude"
The act accomplished these three primary objectives.
The author of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 was
United States Senator
The United States Senate is the Upper house, upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the United States House of Representatives, House of Representatives being the Lower house, lower chamber. Together they compose the national Bica ...
Lyman Trumbull
Lyman Trumbull (October 12, 1813 – June 25, 1896) was a lawyer, judge, and United States Senator from Illinois and the co-author of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Born in Colchester, Connecticut, Trumbull esta ...
.
Congressman
A Member of Congress (MOC) is a person who has been appointed or elected and inducted into an official body called a congress, typically to represent a particular constituency in a legislature. The term member of parliament (MP) is an equivalen ...
James F. Wilson
James Falconer "Jefferson Jim" Wilson (October 19, 1828April 22, 1895) was an American lawyer and politician. He served as a Republican U.S. Congressman from Iowa's 1st congressional district during the American Civil War, and later as a two-te ...
summarized what he considered to be the purpose of the act as follows, when he introduced the legislation in the House of Representatives:
During the subsequent legislative process, the following key provision was deleted: "there shall be no discrimination in civil rights or immunities among the inhabitants of any State or Territory of the United States on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."
John Bingham
John Armor Bingham (January 21, 1815 – March 19, 1900) was an American politician who served as a Republican representative from Ohio and as the United States ambassador to Japan. In his time as a congressman, Bingham served as both assist ...
was an influential supporter of this deletion, on the ground that courts might construe the term "civil rights" more broadly than people like Wilson intended. Weeks later, Senator Trumbull described the bill's intended scope:
On April 5, 1866, the Senate overrode President Andrew Johnson's veto. This marked the first time that the U.S. Congress ever overrode a presidential veto for a major piece of legislation.
Content
With an
incipit
The incipit () of a text is the first few words of the text, employed as an identifying label. In a musical composition, an incipit is an initial sequence of notes, having the same purpose. The word ''incipit'' comes from Latin and means "it beg ...
of "An Act to protect all Persons in the United States in their Civil Rights, and furnish the Means of their vindication", the act declared that all people born in the United States who are not subject to any foreign power are entitled to be citizens, without regard to race, color, or previous condition of
slavery
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
or involuntary servitude.
A similar provision (called the
Citizenship Clause) was written a few months later into the proposed
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. Often considered as one of the most consequential amendments, it addresses citizenship rights and ...
.
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 also said that any citizen has the same right that a white citizen has to make and enforce contracts, sue and be sued, give evidence in court, and inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property. Additionally, the act guaranteed to all citizens the "full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens, and ... like punishment, pains, and penalties..." Persons who denied these rights on account of race or previous enslavement were guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction faced a fine not exceeding $1,000, or imprisonment not exceeding one year, or both.
The act used language very similar to that of the
Equal Protection Clause
The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "''nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal ...
in the newly proposed Fourteenth Amendment. In particular, the act discussed the need to provide "reasonable protection to all persons in their constitutional rights of equality before the law, without distinction of race or color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. ..."
This statute was a major part of general federal policy during
Reconstruction
Reconstruction may refer to:
Politics, history, and sociology
*Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company
*''Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Union ...
, and was closely related to the
Second Freedmen's Bureau Act of 1866. According to Congressman
John Bingham
John Armor Bingham (January 21, 1815 – March 19, 1900) was an American politician who served as a Republican representative from Ohio and as the United States ambassador to Japan. In his time as a congressman, Bingham served as both assist ...
, "the seventh and eighth sections of the Freedmen's Bureau bill enumerate the same rights and all the rights and privileges that are enumerated in the first section of this
he Civil Rights
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
bill."
Parts of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 are enforceable into the 21st century, according to the
United States Code
In the law of the United States, the Code of Laws of the United States of America (variously abbreviated to Code of Laws of the United States, United States Code, U.S. Code, U.S.C., or USC) is the official compilation and codification of the ...
:
One section of the United States Code (42 U.S.C. §1981), is §1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 as revised and amended by subsequent Acts of Congress. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was reenacted by the
Enforcement Act of 1870, ch. 114, § 18, 16 Stat. 144, codified as sections 1977 and 1978 of the Revised Statutes of 1874, and appears now as 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981–82 (1970). Section 2 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, as subsequently revised and amended, appears in the US Code at 18 U.S.C. §242. After the fourteenth amendment became effective, the 1866 Act was reenacted as an addendum to the Enforcement Act of 1870 in order to dispel any possible doubt as to its constitutionality. Act of May 31, 1870, ch. 114, § 18, 16 Stat. 144.
Enactment, constitutionalization, and reenactment
Republicans within Congress were concerned with "an only nominal freedom for the former slaves."
The rights of individual citizens should be protected by the
Federal government of the United States
The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a fede ...
.
Senator
Lyman Trumbull
Lyman Trumbull (October 12, 1813 – June 25, 1896) was a lawyer, judge, and United States Senator from Illinois and the co-author of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Born in Colchester, Connecticut, Trumbull esta ...
was the
Senate
A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...
sponsor of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and he argued that Congress had power to enact it in order to eliminate a discriminatory "badge of servitude" prohibited by the
Thirteenth Amendment.
[Salzman, Lawrence. "Civil Rights Act of 1866" in ''Encyclopedia of American Civil Liberties'', by Paul Finkelman, Volume 1]
pp. 299–300
(CRC Press, 2006). Congressman
A Member of Congress (MOC) is a person who has been appointed or elected and inducted into an official body called a congress, typically to represent a particular constituency in a legislature. The term member of parliament (MP) is an equivalen ...
John Bingham
John Armor Bingham (January 21, 1815 – March 19, 1900) was an American politician who served as a Republican representative from Ohio and as the United States ambassador to Japan. In his time as a congressman, Bingham served as both assist ...
, principal author of the first section of the
Fourteenth Amendment, was one of several Republicans who believed (prior to that Amendment) that Congress lacked power to pass the 1866 Act. In the 20th century, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately adopted Trumbull's Thirteenth Amendment rationale for congressional power to ban racial discrimination by states and by private parties, in view of the fact that the Thirteenth Amendment does not require a
state actor.
To the extent that the Civil Rights Act of 1866 may have been intended to go beyond preventing discrimination, by conferring particular rights on all citizens, the constitutional power of Congress to do that was more questionable. For example, Representative
William Lawrence argued that Congress had power to enact the statute because of the
Privileges and Immunities Clause in Article IV of the original unamended Constitution, even though courts had suggested otherwise.
In any event, there is currently no consensus that the language of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 actually purports to confer any legal benefits upon white citizens. Representative
Samuel Shellabarger
Samuel Shellabarger (18 May 1888 – 21 March 1954) was an American educator and author of both scholarly works and best-selling historical novels.
Born 18 May 1888 in Washington, D.C., Shellabarger was orphaned in infancy, upon the death of bot ...
said that it did not.
After enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 by overriding a presidential veto, some members of Congress supported the
Fourteenth Amendment in order to eliminate doubts about the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, or to ensure that no subsequent Congress could later repeal or alter the main provisions of that Act. Thus, the
Citizenship Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment parallels citizenship language in the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and likewise the
Equal Protection Clause
The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "''nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal ...
parallels nondiscrimination language in the 1866 Act; the extent to which other clauses in the Fourteenth Amendment may have incorporated elements of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 is a matter of continuing debate.
Ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment was completed in 1868, 2 years after, the 1866 Act was reenacted, as Section 18 of the
Enforcement Act of 1870.
Aftermath and consequences
After Johnson's veto was overridden the measure became law. Despite this victory, even some Republicans who had supported the goals of the Civil Rights Act began to doubt that Congress possessed the constitutional power to turn those goals into laws. The experience encouraged both radical and moderate Republicans to seek Constitutional guarantees for black rights, rather than relying on temporary political majorities.
The activities of groups such as the
Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and ...
(KKK) undermined the act, meaning that it failed to immediately secure the civil rights of African Americans.
While it has been ''de jure'' illegal in the U.S. to
discriminate in employment and housing on the basis of race since 1866, federal penalties were not provided for until the second half of the 20th century (with the passage of related civil rights legislation), which meant remedies were left to the individuals involved: because those being discriminated against had limited or no access to legal assistance, this often left many victims of discrimination without recourse.
There have been an increasing number of remedies provided under this act since the second half of the 20th century, including the landmark ''
Jones v. Mayer
''Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co.'', 392 U.S. 409 (1968), is a List of landmark court decisions in the United States, landmark United States Supreme Court case, which held that Congress could regulate the sale of private property to prevent racial di ...
'' and ''Sullivan v. Little Hunting Park, Inc.'' decisions in 1968.
[Player (2004).]
See also
*
US labor law
United States labor law sets the rights and duties for employees, labor unions, and employers in the United States. Labor law's basic aim is to remedy the "inequality of bargaining power" between employees and employers, especially employers "org ...
References
Bibliography
*
Further reading
* Belz, Herman. ''A New Birth of Freedom: The Republican Party and Freedom Rights, 1861 to 1866'' (2000)
* Bracey, Christopher A., and Cody J. Foster. ''Gale Researcher Guide for: The Civil Rights Act of 1866'' (Gale, Cengage Learning, 2018).
* Cahill, Bernadette. ''No Vote for Women: The Denial of Suffrage in Reconstruction America'' (McFarland, 2019).
* Dew, Lee Allen. "The Reluctant Radicals of 1866," ''Midwest Quarterly'' (Spring 1967) pp 261–276.
* Edwards, Laura F. ''A Legal History of the Civil War and Reconstruction'' (Cambridge UP, 2015).
* Foner, Eric. ''Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877'' (1988)
* Greenfield, Gary A., and Don B. Kates Jr. "Mexican Americans, Racial Discrimination, and the Civil Rights Act of 1866." ''California Law Review'' (1975): 662–73
online
* Hyman, Harold M. ''A More Perfect Union'' (1975) pp 427–3
online* Kaczorowski, Robert J. "The Enforcement Provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1866: A Legislative History in Light of Runyon v. McCrary." The Yale Law Journal 98.3 (1989): 565–595.
* Kohl, Robert L. "The Civil Rights Act of 1866, Its Hour Come Round at Last: Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co." ''Virginia Law Review'' (1969): 272–300
online* Player, Mack A. ''Federal Law of Employment Discrimination in a Nutshell'' (2004)
*
* Samito, Christian G., ed. ''The Greatest and the Grandest Act: The Civil Rights Act of 1866 from Reconstruction to Today'' (Southern Illinois UP, 2018
excerpt
*
Tsesis, Alexander. ''The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom: A Legal History'' (2004)
Primary sources
* Samito, Christian G., ed. ''Changes in Law and Society During the Civil War and Reconstruction: A Legal History Documentary Reader'' (SIU Press, 2009{.
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Civil Rights Act Of 1866
1866 in American law
Anti-discrimination law in the United States
History of African-American civil rights
Reconstruction Era legislation
Civil Rights Acts
United States federal criminal legislation
39th United States Congress