94 PART onE • THE AmERiCAn sYsTEm
any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor
deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Note the use of
the terms citizen and person in this amendment. Citizens have political rights, such as the
right to vote and run for political office. Citizens also have certain privileges or immunities
(see Chapter 3). All persons, however, including noncitizen immigrants, have a right to due
process of law and equal protection under the law.
Finally, the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) reads as follows: “The right of citizens of the
United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State
on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”The Civil Rights Acts of 1865 to 1875. From 1865 to 1875, Congress passed a series
of civil rights acts to enforce the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments.
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 implemented the extension of citizenship to anyone born
in the United States and gave African Americans full equality before the law. The act
further authorized the president to enforce the law with the national armed forces. The
Enforcement Act of 1870 set out specific criminal penalties for interfering with the right
to vote as protected by the Fifteenth Amendment and by the Civil Rights Act of 1866.
Equally important was the Civil Rights Act of 1872, known as the Anti–Ku Klux Klan
Act. This act made it a federal crime for anyone to use law or custom to deprive an indi-
vidual of rights, privileges, and immunities secured by the Constitution or by any federal
law. The Second Civil Rights Act, passed in 1875, declared that everyone is entitled to
full and equal enjoyment of public accommodations, theaters, and other places of public
amusement, and it imposed penalties on violators.The ineffectiveness of the Early Civil Rights laws
The Reconstruction statutes, or civil rights acts, ultimately did little to secure equality for
African Americans. Both the Civil Rights Cases and the case of Plessy v. Ferguson (discussed
next) effectively nullified these acts. Additionally, various barriers were erected that pre-
vented African Americans from exercising their right to vote.The Civil Rights Cases. The United States Supreme Court invalidated the 1875 Second
Civil Rights Act when it held, in the Civil Rights Cases^2 of 1883, that the enforcement
clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (which states that “[n]o State shall make or enforce
any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens”) was limited to cor-
recting official actions taken by states. Thus, the discriminatory acts of private citizens
were not illegal. (“Individual invasion of individual rights is not the subject matter of the
Amendment.”) The 1883 Supreme Court decision met with widespread approval by
whites throughout most of the United States.
Twenty years after the Civil War, the white majority was all too willing to forget about
the Civil War amendments to the U.S. Constitution and the civil rights legislation of the
1860s and 1870s. The other civil rights laws that the Court did not specifically invalidate
became dead letters in the statute books, although they were never officially repealed
by Congress. At the same time, many former Confederate leaders had regained political
power in the southern states.Plessy v. Ferguson: separate but Equal. A key decision during this period con-
cerned Homer Plessy, a Louisiana resident who was one-eighth African American. In 1892,2. 109 U.S. 3 (1883).
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