As Americans continue to grapple with racist violence and the legacy of slavery, let us remember the roots of the movement that created the country’s first federal civil rights law, passed 155 years ago by Congress this week.
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 first recognized that people of African descent born in the United States were American citizens and that citizens of “any race or color” had the same basic rights as white citizens.
The civil war was over and slavery had been abolished, but the lawmakers who passed the law knew that additional measures were needed to ensure real freedom. Indeed, many years had been spent in the movement to end racial discrimination in the free states of the north.
As today, politics varied from state to state. In the early decades of the 19th century, lawmakers in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois passed “black laws” to prevent African American migration. These laws required free black residents to register with county officials, forbade them to testify in trials with whites, banned black children from public schools, and reserved voting for white men only.
Most Americans during this period believed that states had the right to regulate and limit the rights of their residents in almost any way they chose. Like those campaigning for draconian immigration restrictions today, lawmakers in the early 19th century insisted that free black migrants are likely to become dependent on public handouts, take jobs from white residents, and commit crimes, and therefore pushed for laws that prevent migration should inhibit.
Early civil rights activists deplored these ideas and called for the repeal of state laws that were expressly discriminated against on the basis of their race. The path they faced was almost unimaginably steep. African Americans, the people who were most violated and most motivated to end such laws, were a tiny fraction of the population in the free states and black men and women were not allowed to vote.
African American writers, speakers, and organizers spoke out against black laws when they could. Despite the potential for violent backlash, a small group of black men met in Cleveland in early 1837 and planned a campaign to repeal Ohio’s black laws and fund black schools. They chose Molliston Madison Clark, a teacher and theology student, to tour Ohio and get people to act.
That summer, the Black Ohioans launched a petition campaign from a statewide convention in Columbus. Their petitions insisted that racial differences in the law “are not found in justice and equality” and they vowed to continue fighting “until justice is done”.
White anti-slavery activists worked with black activists against these state laws. In response to these activists’ petitions, Ohio State Senator Leicester King tabled a report in the spring of 1838 demanding that “the administration of justice … extends the same persons and principles of law to all persons regardless of color, rank, or condition . ”
As is so often the case in the centuries-long American struggle against racial oppression, the king’s allies in the Ohio legislature did not have the votes to pass his proposals. However, the report was largely reprinted and offered encouragement and hope for wider support.
The Ohio civil rights movement would see many more ups and downs over the next decade as activists tried to convince members of both major parties, the Whigs and the Democrats, to join them. They eventually achieved significant success in 1849, when Ohio legislation nearly overturned most of the harmful laws that denied African Americans their basic civil rights.
Massachusetts and New York did not have discriminatory residence laws, but in those states black seafarers were incarcerated and sometimes sold into slavery when docking in southern ports. Under pressure from the anti-slavery movement, these two states authorized their governors in 1839 and 1840 to spend public funds on rescuing black residents who were incarcerated in southern prisons.
The cause was not without tension and differences. Most African American activists called for full racial equality on political rights: the right to vote, hold office and serve in juries. To their frustration, many white allies only met them halfway and fought for civil rights – the right to travel, testify and sue, and be sued – but were reluctant to advocate black men’s suffrage.
But the movement gradually maneuvered from the fringes of mainstream politics to the center – to the Republican Party, which ran for its first presidential nomination in 1856. The rights of free African American people initially took a back seat to questions about the expansion of slavery. When the Republicans entered Congress and the presidency in 1860, and their power was strengthened by the secession from eleven southern states, they pursued the civil rights agenda forged in earlier decades of struggle.
These principles of racial equality were enshrined in both the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the 14th Amendment, passed in 1868, which clearly states that all people born or naturalized in the United States are U.S. citizens and states forbid individuals from being or to deny or not to citizens due process and equal protection of the law.
The history of the first civil rights movement offers several lessons for the present. Including: Significant progressive changes take time. It’s important to forge strategic alliances with people you don’t fully agree with. A tight profit is still a profit. Doors can open for reasons beyond your control. Use power when you have it because moments of real opportunity are hard to come by.
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