CHAPTER 5: LEARNING OBJECTIVES
 Types of Equality
 Define the three types of equality: political,
social, and economic
 Define civil rights and describe its role as a
source of conflict among various groups
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CHAPTER 5: LEARNING OBJECTIVES
 The Struggle for Equality:
Approaches and Tactics
 List the various means groups have
employed to pursue equality within and
outside the political system
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CHAPTER 5: LEARNING OBJECTIVES
 The African American Struggle for
Equality and Civil Rights
 Review the history of racial discrimination against
African Americans
 Explain the role the courts played in initially
denying African Americans full equality, and then
granting that equality in Brown v. Board of
Education
 Understand the framework of equality established
by the Court and the means used to undermine
that framework
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CHAPTER 5: LEARNING OBJECTIVES
 The African American Struggle for
Equality and Civil Rights
 Trace the civil rights movement from its
origins through its turning point in the 1960s
 Describe the civil rights and voting rights
laws passed beginning in the 1960s
 Appreciate more recent battles waged over
affirmative action and racial profiling
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CHAPTER 5: LEARNING OBJECTIVES
 The Women’s Movement and Gender
Equality
 Understand the history of women’s rights
from women’s suffrage up through the
present
 Evaluate the role of the courts in upholding
challenges to gender discrimination in the
1970s
 Understand Title IX and its role in
guaranteeing women’s rights
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CHAPTER 5: LEARNING OBJECTIVES
 Other Struggles for Equality
 Examine the struggles for equality waged by
racial, religious, and ethnic groups
 Recognize the struggles of older Americans,
Americans with disabilities, and gays and
lesbians to achieve equality both through
legislative action and the courts
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BETTMANN/CORBIS
AP PHOTO/WADE SPEES, POOL
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Learning
SLOW GOING FOR A PIONEER IN EQUAL
RIGHTS: NOW & THEN
 Now… Shannon Faulkner became a
modern-day pioneer in equal rights
 Challenged The Citadel, a 152-year-old
male-only military academy
 Prided itself on producing “citizensoldiers,” men uniquely prepared for
leadership in military service and in
civilian life
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Learning
SLOW GOING FOR A PIONEER IN EQUAL
RIGHTS: NOW & THEN
 Faulkner began “hell week” with her
class, but the emotional toll of death
threats and isolation—combined with
intense physical training—proved too
much and she dropped out
 Four women enrolled the following
year—and more women have since
been admitted every year
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Learning
THEN… AUTHERINE LUCY
 1956: first African American student
admitted to the University of Alabama
 Police escorted her to class and
protected her in the classroom
 Suspended after 3 days for her “safety”
 Others followed which led to courtordered integration of UA and other
universities
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TYPES OF EQUALITY
 Political equality:
 Members of different groups possess substantially
the same rights to participate actively in the
political system
 Social equality:
 Equality, and fair treatment within the institutions in
society, both public and private, that serve the
public at large
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TYPES OF EQUALITY
 Economic equality: most controversial
 To some, this requires only equality of
economic “opportunity”—same rights to
enter contracts, purchase and sell
property, and otherwise compete
 To others, this extends beyond equality
of economic opportunity to something
approaching an “equality of results”
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CIVIL RIGHTS
 Positive rights—political, social, or
economic, conferred by the government
on individuals or groups that had
previously been denied them
 In the late 1950s and 1960s, renewed
efforts to guarantee equality in all areas
of American life led to the civil rights
movement
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Learning
THE STRUGGLE FOR EQUALITY:
APPROACHES AND TACTICS
 Accommodation: Booker T.
Washington, a powerful and influential
figure until his death in 1915
 Promoted vocational education for
African Americans and opposed
confrontation
 Encouraged law-abiding practices and
standing by the former oppressors
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THE STRUGGLE FOR EQUALITY:
APPROACHES AND TACTICS
 Agitation: challenged discrimination
and injustice through political activity
 W. E. B. Du Bois—proposed a platform
of legal, political, and social reforms to
achieve social, economic, and political
equality for African Americans
 Eventually replaced accommodation
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THE STRUGGLE FOR EQUALITY:
APPROACHES AND TACTICS
 Tactics used to seek civil rights:
 Working within the Political System
 Litigating
 Legal Boycott
 Civil Disobedience
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Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images
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Learning
Members of the Congressional
Black Caucus at the August
2008 Democratic National
Convention in Denver, Colorado.
THE AFRICAN AMERICAN STRUGGLE
FOR EQUALITY AND CIVIL RIGHTS
 Racial Discrimination: From Slavery
to Reconstruction
 Advocates of gradual emancipation
believed in preventing slavery’s
extension into new areas and relocating
emancipated slaves outside the U.S.
 Abolitionists sought the immediate
emancipation of all slaves
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THE AFRICAN AMERICAN STRUGGLE
FOR EQUALITY AND CIVIL RIGHTS
 The rhetoric surrounding the Civil War
initially focused on states’ rights,
territorial expansion, and slavery
 President Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation
Proclamation declared the freedom of
all slaves in states fighting the Union,
and allowed blacks to enlist in the
Union Army – focused the war on
slavery
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CIVIL WAR AMENDMENTS
 Thirteenth (1865) prohibited slavery
 Fourteenth (1868) granted full U.S.
and state citizenship to all people born
or naturalized in the U.S. and
guaranteed “equal protection of the
laws”
 Fifteenth (1870) the right to vote
cannot be abridged on account of race
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THE AFRICAN AMERICAN STRUGGLE
FOR EQUALITY AND CIVIL RIGHTS
 African Americans achieved some
gains during Reconstruction, however…
 Supreme Court decisions which gutted
federal civil rights guarantees
 Opened the way for numerous abuses
once military occupation of the South
ended in 1877
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THE AFRICAN AMERICAN STRUGGLE
FOR EQUALITY AND CIVIL RIGHTS
 Southern states imposed new barriers
to disenfranchise the former slaves:
 Poll taxes
 Literacy tests
 Grandfather clauses
 Terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan
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RACIAL SEGREGATION AND BARRIERS
TO EQUALITY
 By the turn of the 20th century, growing
racial tensions, exacerbated by
urbanization and industrialization, led to
racial segregation throughout America
 Jim Crow laws required segregation of
blacks and whites in public schools,
railroads, buses, restaurants, hotels,
theaters, and other public facilities
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RACIAL SEGREGATION AND BARRIERS
TO EQUALITY
 Plessy v. Ferguson (1896):
 Separate but equal doctrine
 The Supreme Court upheld a Louisiana law
requiring segregated railroad cars
 Ruled that if the accommodations were
“equal”- racial segregation didn’t violate the
equal protection clause
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RACIAL SEGREGATION AND BARRIERS
TO EQUALITY
 NAACP lawyers began attacking
segregation in the courts in the 1930s
 Won their first battles in higher
education in the 1950s
 The Supreme Court recognized that
separate accommodations in law
schools and colleges failed to meet the
separate but equal standard
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RACIAL SEGREGATION AND BARRIERS
TO EQUALITY
 Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
 The Court held that racial segregation
in any facet of public education
constituted a denial of equal protection
 Recognizing the psychological harms of
segregation, they ruled that segregated
schools were “inherently unequal”
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Learning
RACIAL SEGREGATION AND BARRIERS
TO EQUALITY
 The Court later declared desegregation
proceed “with all deliberate speed” –
 Resistance was significant:
 Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus
 Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett
 Alabama Governor George Wallace
 “Southern Manifesto”
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RACIAL SEGREGATION AND BARRIERS
TO EQUALITY
 Civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s
gave the executive branch increased
power to enforce school desegregation
 Also, courts suspended federal funds
 Many districts where less than half of all
blacks were educated with whites in
1967 were almost fully integrated by
1971
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RACIAL SEGREGATION AND BARRIERS
TO EQUALITY
 De jure discrimination
 Segregation sanctioned by law
 De facto discrimination
 Segregation in reality—occurs when
different racial groups voluntarily choose to
live in different neighborhoods or attend
different schools
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RACIAL SEGREGATION AND BARRIERS
TO EQUALITY
 Today, 70% of the nation’s African
American students attend schools that
are predominantly black
 Over fifty years after Brown, de facto
discrimination in public education
remains a reality in many parts of
America
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THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS
MOVEMENT
 Civil rights protections in all public
accommodations didn’t occur until the
late 1950s and early 1960s
 Rosa Parks’ 1955 arrest for refusing to
give up her seat on a city bus sparked a
boycott of the city’s bus system led by
Martin Luther King Jr.
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THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS
MOVEMENT
 King and others formed the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC) in 1957
 Encouraged Ghandian practices of
nonviolent civil disobedience
 African American and white college
students became the engine for
pressing change
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Learning
Michael Evans/Hulton/Archive/Contributor/Getty Images
In 1948, a nineteen-year-old
student named Martin Luther
King Jr. was first introduced to
the pacifist philosophy of
Mohandas Gandhi. By seeking
a nonviolent confrontation with
the segregation laws, King’s
followers practiced Gandhi’s
philosophy in a way that sent
shock waves throughout the
South and eventually the entire
nation. King would continue to
preach Gandhi’s call for
nonviolent protest up until his
assassination in 1968.
BIRMINGHAM 1963: THE TURNING POINT
OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
 King was arrested leading a nonviolent
march on downtown Birmingham
 Marchers included over 1000 black
schoolchildren, who continued after
King’s arrest, and were met by attack
dogs, cattle prods, and fire hoses
 Pictures flashed across television sets,
newspapers and magazines
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BETTMANN/CORBIS
In 1963, firefighters in Birmingham,
Alabama, sprayed civil rights
demonstrators with fire hoses.
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Learning
BIRMINGHAM 1963: THE TURNING POINT
OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
 Merchants agreed to desegregate lunch
counters and hire more black workers
 But a KKK rally was followed by bombs
exploding at King’s motel
 Riots erupted—President Kennedy sent
troops
 A Baptist Church bombing then killed
four African American schoolgirls
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BIRMINGHAM 1963: THE TURNING POINT
OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
 August 1963—over 250,000 people
Marched on Washington where King
delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech
 1964: three civil rights workers and a
local NAACP leader were murdered
 1965: King organized a march from
Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery
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CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964
 Banned racial discrimination in all public
accommodations
 Prohibited discrimination by employers
and created the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission
 Denied public funds to schools that
continued to discriminate
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VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965
 Invalidated literacy tests and property
requirements
 Required that select states and cities
apply for permission from the Justice
Department to change their voting laws
 Millions of African Americans were
effectively re-enfranchised in the South
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Learning
CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1968
 Prohibited racial discrimination in
housing
 Made interference with a citizen’s civil
rights a federal crime
 Twenty-fourth Amendment (1964)—
 Banned poll taxes in federal elections
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“BLACK NATIONALISM”
 Belief that African Americans could not
effectively work within the racist political
system to produce effective change
 Malcolm X urged African Americans to
shun white culture and values promoted
by white society
 Black Panther Party replaced
nonviolence with confrontational tactics
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CONTINUING STRUGGLES OVER RACIAL
EQUALITY
 Affirmative Action
 Laws or practices designed to remedy past
discriminatory hiring practices, government
contracting, and school admissions
 Regents of the University of
California v. Bakke (1978); Grutter v.
Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger
(2003)
Copyright © 2012 Cengage Learning
GREGORY SHAMUS/REUTERS
Students at the University of Michigan rally
in support of affirmative action. In 2003 the
U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of
affirmative action by the University of
Michigan’s Law School but struck down the
affirmative action program utilized in
undergraduate admissions.
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Learning
CONTINUING STRUGGLES OVER RACIAL
EQUALITY
 Racial Profiling
 Practice of taking race into account when
investigating crimes
 Individuals stopped, questioned, and held in
custody not because there is specific
evidence linking them to a particular crime,
but because they fit a racial “profile” of the
perpetrator
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SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES
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Learning
A policeman interviews several teenagers on a
street corner in Tucson, Arizona. The state’s
controversial new immigration law would allow
officers to check any person’s immigration status
while in the course of enforcing other laws.
THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT AND
GENDER EQUALITY
 Initially, the women’s rights movement
pressed for protective laws—because of
women’s otherwise “inferior legal status”
 Muller v. Oregon (1908): the Supreme Court
stated, “a woman’s physical structure and the
performance of maternal functions place her
at a disadvantage in the struggle for
subsistence”
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WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE EQUAL
RIGHTS AMENDMENT
 The Nineteenth Amendment (1920)
guaranteed women the right to vote
 Women’s rights groups, attempting to
expand women’s legal rights, now
argued men and women should be
treated equally
 Efforts met with limited success at first
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WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE EQUAL
RIGHTS AMENDMENT
 The Supreme Court has refused to view
gender discrimination on the same level
as racial discrimination
 Goesaert v. Cleary (1948):
 Law banning women bartenders
 Hoyt v. Florida (1961):
 Women excused from jury duty
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WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE EQUAL
RIGHTS AMENDMENT
 Didn’t achieve any significant
breakthroughs until the early 1970s
 National Organization for Women
(NOW) became a forceful advocate for
the Equal Rights Amendment and other
equal rights in education, employment,
and political opportunities for women
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LEGAL CHALLENGES TO GENDER
DISCRIMINATION
 The American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU) turned its attention to women’s
rights in the late 1960s
 Led by board member Ruth Bader
Ginsburg – achieved several victories
 Reed v. Reed (1971)
 Frontiero v. Richardson (1973)
 Craig v. Boren (1976)
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TITLE IX—FEDERAL
EDUCATIONAL AMENDMENTS OF
1972
 Prohibited exclusion of women from an
educational program or activity
receiving federal government financial
assistance
 Courts have ruled that colleges and
universities must provide equal
numbers of athletic teams for women
and men
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TITLE VII OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF
1964
 Extended protection to women against
discrimination in private and public
businesses
 Armed with equal rights to education
and to entry in the workforce, women
have made considerable occupational
gains during the twentieth century
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YOUR PERSPECTIVE ON AMERICAN
GOVERNMENT
 Is the intense focus of colleges and
universities on gender equality in their
collegiate sports programs justified?
 Would you favor the elimination of a
successful men’s sports team at your
own institution on the basis of an
imbalance in male and female
scholarship athletes on campus?
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YOUR PERSPECTIVE ON AMERICAN
GOVERNMENT
 Do you participate in other aspects of
college life such as school-sponsored
clubs or the school band where gender
inequality exists in some form?
 Does the intense focus of Title IX
enforcement on sports teams in
particular tend to obscure gender
discrimination where it exists elsewhere
on campus?
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ADDITIONAL GENDER ISSUES
 Despite the Equal Pay Act (1963)—In
2000, women on average earned 73
cents for every dollar a man received
 Sexual harassment: is a form of
sexual discrimination actionable under
Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act
 However, many sexual advances in the
workplace continue
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OTHER STRUGGLES FOR EQUALITY
 Native Americans:
 Millions were herded onto reservations
 Dawes Severalty Act (1887): Divided
tribal lands among individual Indians
who renounced their tribal holdings –
 Many chose to remain on reservations
 Not admitted to full citizenship until
1924
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NATIVE AMERICAN ACTIVISM
 November 1969—June 1971, seventyeight tribe members occupied Alcatraz
Island in San Francisco Bay
 1972 : members of the American Indian
Movement (AIM) occupied the Bureau
of Indian Affairs
 Demanded the rights and privileges
promised under the original treaties
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AP PHOTO
Native Americans protest federal policies
by temporarily occupying Alcatraz Island in
San Francisco Bay.
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Learning
ASIAN AMERICANS
 Supplied much of the labor building
U.S. railroads in the nineteenth century
 Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)
 National Origins Act (1924)
 1942: the government forcibly relocated
110,000 Japanese Americans to inland
internment camps and seized their
property
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MUSLIM AMERICANS
 September 11, 2001, has taken a toll on
citizens’ perceptions of Muslim
Americans
 Congressional initiatives under the
Patriot Act have targeted many Muslim
Americans for questioning, and in some
cases temporary detention
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HISPANIC AMERICANS
 Spanish-speaking descent –
 A majority descended from Mexicans
living in the Southwest when it became
part of the United States in the 1840s
 Even after immigration laws were
tightened in the 1890s, hundreds of
thousands of Mexicans continued to
enter the United States illegally
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HISPANIC AMERICANS
 More than 35 million people of Hispanic
descent currently live in the U.S.
 Hispanics were never legally barred
from the polls, and have been an
influential minority in several states
 But, their political power has limitations,
possibly because many are not citizens
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OLDER AMERICANS
 Approximately 13% of Americans are over
the age of sixty-five, compared with 4% at
the beginning of the 20th century
 Very politically active – AARP has over 40
million members
 Age Discrimination in Employment Act
(1967)—unlawful to hire or fire a person on
the basis of age
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INDIVIDUALS WITH DISABILITIES
 1920s: some state laws authorized
sterilization of institutionalized “mental
defectives”
 Today, millions of Americans with
disabilities attend school, are employed,
and live otherwise normal lives
 Americans with Disabilities Act (1990)
prohibits discrimination in employment
and public accommodations
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STEVEN RUBIN/THE IMAGE WORKS
Activists for the rights of individuals with
disabilities at a rally advocating broader
enforcement of the Americans with
Disabilities Act of 1990.
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Learning
GAYS AND LESBIANS
 Least successful in having their claims
to equal treatment vindicated – however
have made a few advances via court
decisions
 Romer v. Evans (1996)
 Lawrence v. Texas (2003)
 U.S. military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” rule
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STEVEN RUBIN/THE IMAGE WORKS
Gay-marriage supporters at a
Seattle rally in March 2006.
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AMERICAN GOVERNMENT . . . IN
POPULAR PERSPECTIVE:
 Recognizing the Legitimacy of SameSex Marriage
 Currently, 5 states and the District of
Columbia perform marriages for samesex couples
 Maine repealed its law, and 30 states
have banned it
 Defense of Marriage Act (1996)
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Learning
NOW & THEN: MAKING THE
CONNECTION
 Lucy and Faulkner’s actions provided a
foundation for future aspirants to build on
their accomplishments
 Today, various groups still walk this path
 Fortunately, the American political system
encourages dialogue between the majority
and underrepresented groups
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POLITICS INTERACTIVE!
 EVEN IN CONGRESS, A MUSLIM
BRACES FOR DISCRIMINATION
 Keith Maurice Ellison—first Muslim
elected to the federal government:
www.cengage.com/dautrich/america
ngovernment/2e—provides details
about Ellison’s political and religious
background, and statistics about
religious diversity in current and past
congresses
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