The Civil Rights Act Of 1866

“I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.”

-- Theodore Roosevelt --

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 enacted on April 09, 1866, was an Act to protect all Persons in the United States in their Civil Rights and furnish the means of justification.

“Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That all persons born in the United States and not subject to foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States; and such citizens, of every race and color, without regard to any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall have the same right, in every State and Territory in the united States, to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefits of all law and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, and penalties, and to none other, any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, to the contrary notwithstanding.”

The law passing in 1866 was the first Civil Rights Act legislation approved by Congress to afford African Americans equal status under the law, but it would take more than a century to end the legal oppression of African Americans.

Additional Civil Rights Acts were passed in 1871 (Enforcement Acts), the Civil Rights Act of 1875, ...

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...dation and violence, including lynching, were an ever-present danger. Northern African Americans were not unaffected and suffered the same widespread discrimination and school and residential segregation.

It was not until the modern civil rights movement of the 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s, a period that some call the Second that these discriminatory laws and practices finally began to give way. During this period, African Americans and their allies finally confronted long-standing oppression, injustices, and prejudices as a unified movement for integration instead it became a total liberation and identity movement.

Events like 1954 Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed segregated education, and 1956’s, Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat, which stemmed the Montgomery Bus Boycott, was the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement.