156156 Chapter 5 | Civil RightsReagan signed into law the Civil Liberties Act, which paid more than $1.6 billion in
reparations to the survivors of the camps and their heirs.^14 In 2018, the Court explicitly
overturned the 1944 decision that approved the internment, saying, “The forcible
relocation of U.S. citizens to concentration camps, solely and explicitly on the basis
of race, is objectively unlawful and outside the scope of presidential authority.”^15 In
recent decades, a much broader range of Asians have emigrated to the United States,
including Koreans, Filipinos, Hmong, Vietnamese, and Asian Indians. This variation
in national heritage, culture, and language means that Asian Americans are quite
diverse in their political views, partisan affiliation, and voting patterns.Women and Civil Rights
On the eve of the United States’ declaration of independence in 1776, John Adams’s
wife, Abigail, advised him not to “put such unlimited power in the hands of the
husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could.... If particular care
and attention is not paid to the ladies, we... will not hold ourselves bound by any laws
in which we have no voice or representation.”^16 John Adams did not listen to his wife.
The Constitution did not give women the right to vote, and they were not guaranteed
that civil right until the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920—although 16
states had allowed women to vote before then. Until the early twentieth century,
women in most parts of the country could not hold office, serve on juries, bring lawsuits
in their own name, own property, or serve as legal guardians for their children. A
woman’s identity was so closely tied to her husband that if she married a noncitizen she
automatically gave up her citizenship!
The rationale for these policies was called protectionism. The argument was that
women were too frail to compete in the business world and needed to be protected
by men. This reasoning served in many court cases to deny women equal rights. For
example, in 1869 Myra Bradwell requested admission to the Illinois bar to practice
law. She was the first woman to graduate from law school in Illinois and the editor of
Chicago Legal News, and she held all the qualifications to be a lawyer in the state exceptDuring World War II, tens of thousands
of Japanese Americans were forced to
relocate to internment camps. Nearly
two-thirds were American citizens, and
most lost their homes and jobs.protectionism
The idea under which some
people have tried to rationalize
discriminatory policies by claiming
that some groups, like women or
African Americans, should be denied
certain rights for their own safety or
well-being.Full_06_APT_64431_ch05_148-197.indd 156 16/11/18 1:27 PM