The 1964 Civil Rights Act & Two Court Cases

If you have even a perfunctory knowledge of what happened during the Civil Rights Movement in the US, you remember the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The purpose of the act was to end segregation in public places because segregation discriminated so heavily against African Americans living in the South. It also banned segregation in employment and in any schools that received funding from the US government.

Here’s something you might not know about the 1964 Civil Rights Act, however. The part banning public segregation was a virtual repeat of the 1875 Civil Rights Act. The 1875 act affirmed the equality of all men before the law and prevented public discrimination, with violations tried in federal courts.

Trying cases in federal courts was part of the law for a reason very obvious at the time. Everyone knew that southern states were already discriminating against the former slaves in any way they could. (Look up the Black Codes some time if you need examples of how it worked.) Any civil rights case tried in a state court, therefore, would almost certainly not yield justice for African Americans. Only in federal court might any semblance of justice prevail.

So, Why Did the US Need the 1964 Civil Rights Act?

Why was the 1964 Civil Rights Act a near repeat of something Congress had done 89 years earlier? The answer lies in the Supreme Court. When opponents challenged the constitutionality of the 1875 act, the Court made its ruling the Civil Rights Cases of 1883. (There were five cases, all similar, on which the Court ruled, so it issued the same ruling for all five at once.)

The Supreme Court’s decision was nearly unanimous, 8-1. It ruled that neither the 13th Amendment (which abolished slavery) or 14th Amendment (which guaranteed all citizens the equal protection of the laws) protected people from discrimination, so long as that discrimination was not a state law. The Court interpreted the wording of the 14th Amendment literally. It stated that states could not deprive people of life, liberty, or property without the due process of law. However, the Court ruled, if individuals, cities, or private organizations did so, they were not violating the 14th Amendment. It only prohibited the states from discriminating.

Here we have the legal origins of the system of segregation we call Jim Crow. With this court ruling, segregation grew and flourished throughout the South. It gutted the protections for the former slaves that the authors of the 13th and 14th amendments clearly intended to provide for African Americans.

So, Who Was the Lone Dissenter?

In his majority decision, Justice Joseph Bradley argued that not all forms of discrimination meant a return to slavery, so the 13th Amendment was no justification for the 1875 act. The 14th Amendment only applied if a state legislated laws explicitly prejudicial against African Americans. However, if a state failed to protect its citizens from discrimination, Congress could do nothing. It could only prevent active discrimination by the states. With this ruling, the door to Jim Crow flew wide open.

The only dissenting justice was John Marshall Harlan. He realized that with this ruling, the 14th Amendment meant nothing for the former slaves. Indeed, it was also during the 1880s when the same Court used the 14th Amendment to uphold the rights of corporations, treating them as people. This had nothing to do with what the authors of the amendment intended, of course, but this was an era of massive conservative judicial activism.

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The legal defense of the 1964 Civil Rights Act followed the logic of John Marshall Harlan (pictured) rather than that of Joseph Bradley.
The legal defense of the 1964 Civil Rights Act followed the logic of John Marshall Harlan (pictured) rather than that of Joseph Bradley.

Harlan also pointed out that the Supreme Court had had no trouble allowing Congress to take action against African Americans to restrict their freedom before the Civil War. The Fugitive Slave Acts are a proximate example of this. In other words, the court was bucking precedent without demonstrating why this was necessary. Harlan also recognized that when businesses discriminated, they did so with their state’s consent. Businesses were subject to state law. If businesses discriminated, and states did not prevent this, they were, in effect, taking action that discriminated.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act

Only 89 years later did Congress make another attempt to remedy this travesty of justice. During the intervening four generations, life was, to put it bluntly, really hard for African Americans in the US. They held citizenship, but in name only in most places. The daily discrimination and humiliation that many faced is a blight on US history.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act was another attempt to remedy this. It, too, faced a court challenge. In 1964, the Supreme Court heard the case Heart of Atlanta Motel v. U.S. The owner of the Heart of Atlanta Motel, which had segregated and refused to serve African Americans, sued on three grounds. The 1964 Civil Rights Act, he claimed, didn’t fall within Congress’s right to regulate interstate commerce. He also claimed that it violated the 5th Amendment by depriving him of his property without due process. Lastly, the owner believed the act forced him into involuntary servitude by requiring him to treat all customers equally, violating the 13th Amendment.

Fortunately, this time the Supreme Court decided to rule on the right side of justice for all. It issued a unanimous decision denying all three complaints and upholding the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The Importance of These Two Cases

I know it took a while to get to the point, but here’s why this matters. These two cases are a great example of how a literal reading of laws often conflicts with their spirit, and how these literal readings of laws often open the door to a host of negative consequences.

Even in 1883, it was obvious to everyone that African Americans faced poor treatment in the South. The 14th Amendment and 1875 Civil Rights Act were, equally obviously, designed to prevent this. Yet, the Supreme Court used a technicality to prevent the 1875 act from doing what its authors meant it to do. It interpreted the act, and the 14th Amendment, as narrowly as possible when protecting African Americans, but as broadly as possible to extend new rights to corporations.

The result was catastrophic. Discrimination, segregation, lynchings, and institutionalized racism were the result. The 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which declared “separate but equal” to be constitutional, gets much attention, and deservedly so. But that decision was only possible because of the 1883 decision. This decision was possible because the 1883 Supreme Court gave a theoretical understanding of liberty more importance than the flesh and blood, real life consequences of its decision.

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