Since the Civil War, much of the concern over civil rights in the United States focused on efforts to extend these rights fully to African Americans. The first legislative attempts to assure African Americans an equal political and legal status were the Civil Rights Acts of 1866, 1870, 1871, and 1875. Those acts bestowed upon African Americans such freedoms as the right to sue and be sued, to give evidence, and to hold real and personal property. The 1866 act was of dubious constitutionality and was reenacted in 1870 only after the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment. The fourth Civil Rights Act attempted to guarantee to the African Americans those social rights that were still withheld. It penalized innkeepers, proprietors of public establishments, and owners of public conveyances for discriminating against African Americans in accommodations, but was invalidated by the Supreme Court in 1883 on the ground that these were not properly civil rights and hence not a field for federal legislation.
After the Civil Rights Act of 1875 there was no more federal legislation in this field until the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960, although several states passed their own civil-rights laws. The United States civil-rights movement active during the 1950s and 60s aimed to end segregation and discrimination against blacks, as well as affirm their constitutional rights and improve their status in society. Organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) helped bring about important legislation, including the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, desegregating schools. Further legislation followed, such as the Civil Rights Acts 1964 and the Voting Rights Act 1965, under President Lyndon Johnson. Prominent civil-rights activists such as Martin Luther King inspired nonviolent protest and helped effect these changes.
During the period of Reconstruction after the American......
