National Crises and Civil Rights: 1929-1948 Policy and Practice, 105 The Supreme Court in Transition, 109 The Private Sector, 112 War II, 114 Postwar Progress, 118 Breakthrough Toward Equality: 1948-1962 The Capital Desegregates, 122. The Armed Forces Desegregate, 125 Expanding Employment Opportunity, 127 The Right to Travel, 134 • Progress in Housing, 139 Education and the Law, 144⚫ Private Groups and Public Policy, 161 • Places of Public Accommodation, 181 • Administration of Justice, 184 Voting and TH Introduction HE rise of the American Negro from slavery to citizenship is one of the most dramatic chapters of American history. It is also a continuing process, the pace of which has at times been a source of national disgrace. Slavery is now a curious and archaic word. To the heirs of slave and master there has been left a legacy of shame and triumph, pain and joy, that constitutes a unique record of the indomitability of the human spirit. With this 100-yearold legacy has come the task of continuing the quest for full citizenship. The purpose of this report is to follow this quest from the time of the Emancipation Proclamation until the present. Its scope is the breadth of the Negro's aspiration for true equality and freedom. It embraces all those whom history chose to play a part in the evolution of civil rights in America. During the closing years of the Civil War, responsible leaders began to talk about the rights to which the freedman would be entitled, and they began to call them civil rights. The term was widely used in the years following the war, and Congress recognized the relevance of civil rights to the status of Negroes by enacting in 1866 the first "Civil Rights" law with the specific purpose of protecting the freed Negro from discrimination. For 100 years the question of civil rights has been intimately connected with the Negro in the United States. In confining the report to Negroes we in no way suggest that the record presented has relevance only for that group of the population. In placing special emphasis on civil rights we mean to stress those individual rights protected against denials based upon such characteristics as race, color, religion, or national origin. The groups identified for purposes of such protection, and the range of activities protected, are defined by State and Federal law, as well as by constitutional provisions and judicial interpretation.* In advancing toward a position of relative social, economic, and political equality in the United States, the Negro has not been a passive element of the population, operated upon for good or for bad by government. There is an impressive record of individual and group achievement, largely self-initiated and self-sustained, which has contributed to the total well-being and enrichment of the Nation. Private groups, as well as government, have provided the aegis for progress in the American tradition, and every attempt is made to record this effort. While taking into account the tremendous strides that have been made since 1863, the report also recognizes the existence of periods of disturbing lack of progress, of retrogression, and instances of violence and abuse. A gap between our recorded aspirations and actual practices still remains. *Such terms as civil rights, civil liberties, constitutional rights, and political and human rights are employed in contemporary literature sometimes in such a manner as to suggest they are synonymous in meaning, sometimes as if to suggest there are important differences in meaning among them. Rarely is an effort made to define these differences. Suffice it to say for the purpose of this study that by civil liberties, as distinguished from civil rights as defined in the text above, we refer to that broad and changing body of substantive liberties and procedural guarantees which Justice Cardozo referred to as "of the essence of a scheme of ordered liberty." Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319 (1937). These are liberties which any individual, without regard to group identity, may find himself defending against incursion by government or by private action. The standard for identifying such liberties is necessarily vague. The line between a liberty which is essential to the preservation of a free society and one which is not is necessarily a wavering one. When persons speak of constitutional rights, political and human rights, they may be speaking of civil liberties or civil rights, depending upon the context. But in each of the periods reported since the turn of this century, significant progress has been made toward closing this gap. In the decades since the Second World War the pace of progress has accelerated until today, for all the contradictions, all the transitional dislocations, all the temporary setbacks and stalemates, governments at all levels as well as private associations and individuals are pressing determinedly and successfully toward the goal of equality before the law and equal opportunity for all. |