Affirmative Action

14 Pages 3391 Words

efore the ultimate solution is found.
“In the United States, equality is a recurring theme. It has flared into a fervent moral issue at crucial stages of American history: The revolutionary and Jacksonian Period, and the New Deal. In each era, the legitimacy of American society is challenged by some set of people unhappy with the degree of equality” (Verba and Orren). Following the Civil War, Congress passed a number of laws designed to put former slaves on an equal level with white people. The Fourteenth Amendment made the freedmen citizen and prohibited states from enforcing any law, which took away the privileges of any citizen, depriving man of life, liberty, or property without due process of the law, or denied men equal protection of the laws.
In 1875, Republican majority in Congress, aware that reconstruction would soon end, passed a civil rights act to secure by law semblance of equality for Black Americans (Urofsky 19). Many white Americans really did not like the idea of equality for the Black Freedmen. “Gideon Welles, who had been prevailing sentiment when he wrote in 1871: ‘Thank God slavery is abolished, but the Negro is not, and never can be the equal of the white man. He is of an inferior race and must always remain so’”(Urofsky 23).
The Supreme Court agreed and in 1883 passed the Civil Rights act, which diluted much of the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Joseph Bradely interpreted the enforcement provision of the amendment as strictly remedial; “congress has the power to remedy a discriminatory state law, but could not take affirmative steps to protect blacks from other forms of prejudice” (Urofsky 21). As a result of this decision, the federal government took no action to combat racism in the country until the Second World War (Urofsky 22).
Because resentment continued to increase within the black communities and because of the threat of a march on Washington, President Franklin D. ...