150th Anniversary of the 1875 Civil Rights Act and Tennessee’s Peremptory Role in Its Nullification

Shifting societal paradigms and expectations takes time to effectuate. However, Tennessee, the last state to secede from America and the first Confederate state to re-enter the nation after the Civil War moved expeditiously when in April 1865, it ratified the 13th and ratified the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution on July 18, 1866. These two Amendments freed the formerly enslaved and made them citizens. The 14^th, or citizenship amendment, nullified the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred V. Scott v. Sandford decision that denied the legality of African American citizenship. The Supreme Court’s 1857 ruling stated that enslaved people were not citizens of the United States and, consequently, could not expect any protection from the federal government or the courts. By the time the 15th Amendment arrived in the state for ratification, legislators were in the process of trying to negate the new voting law giving African American men the vote. Consequently, they refused to ratify the 15^th Amendment. After 127 years, on April 2, 1997, Tennessee finally ratified the 15th Amendment, the last of the original thirty-seven states in the Union that had not committed an act of support.

During Reconstruction, the U. S. Congress enacted laws to protect the rights of formerly enslaved people, often overriding President Andrew Johnson's vetoes. One such law was the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which declared that all people born in the United States were U.S. citizens and had certain inalienable rights, including the right to make contracts, to own property, to sue in court, and to enjoy the full protection of federal law. Congress overrode Johnson’s veto on April 9, 1866, and elements of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 eventually became the template for the 14^th Amendment. The Civil Rights Act began a gradual transformation of the federal courts into the primary forums for individuals to enforce their constitutional and statutory rights.

 Seven years after the passage of the 15^th Amendment to the United State Constitution that gave African American men the right of the franchise, the United States Congress passed the 1875 Civil Rights Act, the last of the major Reconstruction statutes, which guaranteed African Americans equal treatment in public transportation and public accommodations and service on juries. Passed two years prior to the end of Reconstruction by the 43^rd United States Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1875, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, also known as the Enforcement Act or the Force Act required: “That all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement; subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law, and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude.” The second section provided that any person denied access to these facilities on account of race would be entitled to monetary restitution under a federal court of law. Although Tennessee is known for the enactment of the first “Jim Crow” law in 1881, the same year that the federal 1875 Civil Rights Act was signed into law, Tennessee passed a law that permitted discrimination in public places, as noted in Chapter 130 of the Acts of Tennessee.

In 1872 voters elected the first African American to the Tennessee General Assembly, Nashville barber Sampson W. Keeble. The apprehension of white voters about African Americans occupying positions of authority set the stage for Tennessee’s first Jim Crow law. The same month that the 1875 Civil Rights Act passed on the federal level, during the 1875 Session of the General Assembly, Democrat R. P. Cole (Carroll, Gibson, Henry, and Weakley) introduced House Bill 527, which passed on March 23, 1875. Approved by both chambers of the General Assembly, the bill permitted hotels, inns, public transportation, and amusement parks to refuse admission and service to any person for any reason. Tennessee legislators passed a law that discriminated against approximately 25 percent of its population.

Other border states passed similar laws targeting African Americans' new constitutional rights and protections. Congressional passage of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1875 was an attempt to enforce and protect the rights and equality of African Americans. However, the 1875 Civil Rights Act set off a jurisprudence conflict between state and federal authority. The U.S. Supreme Court settled that conflict in 1883 when it found the Civil Rights Act to be an unconstitutional exercise of 13th Amendment powers. The Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional in 1883. In a consolidated case, known as the Civil Rights Cases, the court found that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution granted Congress the right to regulate the behavior of states, not individuals. The decision presaged the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision in which the Court ruled that separate but equal facilities for African Americans and whites were constitutional.

It took the Congress 74 years before it enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1957. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 established the United States Commission on Civil Rights and the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division (dismantled from its original intent this year). Later, the Congress passed far more effective civil rights laws in the form of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Civil Rights Act of 1960 corroborated racially, discriminatory voter-registration practices and provided evidentiary proof used to succor passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Although some applauded the historical significance of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, historians fundamentally agreed with the opinions of its contemporaneous analysts, universally concluding that the 1957 act was deficient and unenforceable, except in a few rare cases. The Civil Rights Act of 1960 offered a new apparatus to acquire additional evidence. Four years after the passage of the 1960 Civil Rights Act and after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s 1963 March on Washington, the Congress passed, and President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights into law on July 2, 1964. A landmark piece of the legislation, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was similar to the 1875 Civil Rights Act, outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in the United States. It prohibited discrimination in public accommodations, employment, education, federally assisted programs, and established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to enforce these provisions.

Notwithstanding, the Civil Rights Act of 1875 is noteworthy as the last major piece of legislation related to Reconstruction that passed Congress. These include the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the four Reconstruction Acts of 1867 and 1868, the Enforcements Act of 1870 and 1871 and the Constitutional Amendments adopted between 1865 and 1870. Provisions contained in the Civil Rights Act of 1875 were later readopted by Congress during the Modern Civil Rights Movement as part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Civil Rights of 1968. Both the 1964 and 1968 Acts relied upon the Commerce Clause contained in Article One of the Constitution of the United States rather than the Equal Protection Clause within the 14th Amendment.