The Equal Protection Clause
Section One of the 14th Amendment Guarantees Civil Liberties
May 13, 2009 Michael Streich
The “Equal Protection” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Section One, was designed to federally protect the rights of all citizens, including the former slaves of the South. Adopted by Congress in 1868, the Amendment was a response to growing efforts in the South to deprive blacks of civil rights. Providing for “equal protection of the laws” targeted Southern efforts keeping blacks from voting, as well as halting the process that ultimately led to the policy of “separate but equal.”
Combating Efforts That Denied Equal Protection
Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment declares that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” This is followed by the Equal Protection clause. Rejecting Reconstruction efforts and goals as they related to African Americans, Southern states attempted to keep the former slaves in a servile position.
This began with the Black Codes. Although overturned by the Civil Rights Act of 1866, practices begun by the codes were continued. Further, those equal access laws passed by state Reconstruction governments led by African American representatives were not enforced.
Local “vagrancy” laws were tied to unemployment, forcing blacks to work for whites at highly disadvantageous wage agreements or face arrest. Some states defined what jobs African Americans were allowed to pursue. South Carolina, for example, allowed blacks to work only as farmers or servants. Pursuing other occupations was tied to steep taxes.
Other laws addressed trespassing, preaching without a license, the purchase of alcohol, and owning weapons. Once African American males received the right to vote, local jurisdictions found ways to disenfranchise voters through literacy tests, poll taxes, and property qualifications. Yet few cases based on the Equal Protection clause made their way through the federal courts.
Southern Response to Equal Protection
Although the presence of Federal troops in many states, particularly those where volatile white elites used armed force to harass African Americans, kept violence to a minimum and enforced Congressional Reconstruction mandates, intimidation was rampant. After 1868, extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan initiated a wave of terror.
The Klan not only intimidated blacks, but assassinated whites that supported equal protection. Targeting Republican state governments, the Klan engaged in a bloodbath of terror, seeking to expel these governments and “redeem” the states with a return to power of white elites. By 1877, this was a completed task as the results of the 1876 election returned the South to “home rule.”
Despite the Fourteenth Amendment and the guarantee of equal protection, Southern society became more segregated as “separate but equal” deepened. By 1896, in the case Plessy v. Ferguson, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld separate but equal, dooming Southern blacks to decades of discrimination and segregation.
Equal Protection and the Civil Rights Movement
Attorneys arguing before the Supreme Court in the 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education underscored section one of the Fourteenth Amendment, convincing the high court that the Equal Protection clause did apply to segregation. The court agreed, seeing the intent of the writers of the Amendment as subjecting the states to Federal law. Separate but equal was “inherently” unequal.
Since then, the Equal Protection clause has been applied in many areas of discrimination including women’s rights and age discrimination issues. It is perhaps one of the most important Constitutional guarantees available to all citizens.
Sources:
- Fourteenth Amendment, United States Constitution
- Ellen Alderman and Caroline Kennedy, The Right to Privacy (Alfred A. Knopf, 1995)
- Eric Foner, Reconstruction (History Book Club – Harper/Collins, 2005)
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