114 PART onE • THE AmERiCAn sYsTEm
affirmative action 107
civil disobedience 97
civil rights 92
de facto segregation 97
de jure segregation 97
feminism 101gender
discrimination 102
grandfather clause 95
Hispanic 104
Latino 104
literacy test 95poll tax 95
reverse
discrimination 108
separate-but-equal
doctrine 95
sexual harassment 103strict scrutiny 108
suffrage 100
white primary 95keyterms
chaptersummary
1 Before the Civil War, most African Americans
were slaves, and slavery was protected by the
Constitution. Constitutional amendments after the
Civil War ended slavery, and African Americans
gained citizenship, the right to vote, and other
rights through legislation. This protection was
largely a dead letter by the 1880s, however, and
African American inequality continued.
2 Segregation was declared unconstitutional by
the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education
of Topeka (1954), in which the Court stated that
separation implied inferiority. In 1955, the modern
civil rights movement began with a boycott of
segregated public buses in Montgomery, Alabama.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 bans discrimination in
employment and public accommodations on the basis
of race, color, religion, gender, or national origin.
3 The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed
discriminatory voter-registration tests and
authorized federal voter registration. The Voting
Rights Act and other protective legislation apply
not only to African Americans but also to other
ethnic groups. Minorities have been increasingly
represented in national and state politics.
4 In the early history of the United States, women
had no political rights. After the first women’s rights
convention in 1848, the women’s movement gained
momentum. Not until 1920, when the Nineteenth
Amendment was ratified, did women finally obtain
the right to vote in all states. The modern women’s
movement began in the 1960s in the wake of the
civil rights and anti–Vietnam War movements.
Efforts to secure the ratification of the Equal Rights
Amendment failed, but the women’s movement was
successful in obtaining new laws, changes in social
customs, and increased political representation of
women.5 The number of women in Congress and in other
government bodies increased significantly in the
1990s and early 2000s. Federal government efforts
to eliminate gender discrimination in the workplace
include Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
which prohibits gender-based discrimination,
including sexual harassment on the job. Wage
discrimination continues to be a problem for women.
6 Today, most immigrants come from Asia
and Latin America, especially Mexico. Many are
unauthorized immigrants (also called illegal aliens
or undocumented workers). The percentage of
Latinos, or Hispanic Americans, in the population is
growing rapidly. By 2050, non-Hispanic whites will
make up only about half of the nation’s residents.
While Latinos who are citizens benefit from the same
antidiscrimination measures as African Americans,
immigrants who are not citizens have few civil rights.
7 Affirmative action programs have been
controversial because they may lead to reverse
discrimination against majority groups or even
other minority groups. Supreme Court decisions
have limited affirmative action programs drastically
and several states now ban state-sponsored
affirmative action.
8 Gay and lesbian rights groups became
commonplace after 1969. After 1969, sodomy laws
that criminalized specific sexual practices were
repealed or struck down by the courts in about half
of the states. In 2003, a Supreme Court decision
effectively invalidated all remaining sodomy laws
nationwide. Many states, cities, and counties
now have laws prohibiting at least some types of
discrimination based on sexual orientation. The
issues of same-sex marriage and whether gays and
lesbians can serve openly in the military have fueled
extensive controversy.Copyright 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
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