List of landmark African-American legislation facts for kids

The history of African Americans in the United States has been shaped by many important laws, court decisions, and government actions. These changes have helped to define the rights and freedoms of Black people throughout American history. From the early days of slavery to the fight for civil rights, these moments have played a big part in the journey toward equality.

Important Laws Passed by Congress

This section looks at some key laws passed by the U.S. Congress. These laws cover a long period, from the time of slavery to modern efforts for justice.

Laws That Didn't Pass

Sometimes, important ideas for laws don't make it through Congress. Here are a few that aimed to help African Americans but were not passed:

• Land Ordinance of 1784: This early proposal wanted to stop slavery in any new states created after 1800. However, this part was removed from the final version of the bill.
• Wilmot Proviso (1847): This bill tried to ban slavery in the lands the U.S. gained after the Mexican-American War. It didn't pass, showing how divided the country was over slavery.
• Anti-Lynching Bills (early 1900s): Several bills, like the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill (1921), tried to make lynching a federal crime. Lynching was a terrible act of violence, often against Black people. These bills were stopped by senators who opposed them, mostly from the Southern states.
• Civil Rights Act of 1990: This bill aimed to make it easier for people to win civil rights lawsuits. Congress passed it, but President George H.W. Bush vetoed it, meaning he refused to sign it into law.
• Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act (2021-22): This proposed law would create a group to study the idea of reparations for slavery in the U.S. It's known as H.R. 40.
• George Floyd Justice In Policing Act (2020-21): After the deaths of George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks, this bill aimed to stop police misconduct and racial bias. It sought to make policing fairer for everyone.

Laws That Became Law

Many laws have been signed that directly affected African Americans, sometimes limiting their rights and other times expanding them.

Laws Before the Civil War

• Slave Codes (1685-1865): These were a series of laws that greatly limited the rights of enslaved people. They included rules that created slave patrols, restricted movement, banned education, and set harsh punishments.
  • Virginia Slave Codes of 1705: These were some of the most detailed slave codes, making slavery a lifelong condition passed down through the mother.
• Ordinance of 1787 (Northwest Ordinance): This important law banned slavery in the Northwest Territory, which was land north of the Ohio River.
• Fugitive Slave Law of 1793: This law made it legal for slave owners to get back enslaved people who had escaped to other states.
• Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves (1807): This law made the international slave trade illegal, meaning no new enslaved people could be brought into the U.S. from other countries.
• Missouri Compromise (1820): This law tried to balance the number of free and slave states. It banned slavery north of a specific line (36°30′ north latitude), except for Missouri, which was allowed to be a slave state. This compromise showed the growing divide in the country.
• Compromise of 1850: This was a group of laws that dealt with slavery and new territories gained from the Mexican-American War.
  • Fugitive Slave Law of 1850: This part of the compromise made the 1793 law even stricter. It required federal officials to arrest suspected runaway enslaved people and fined anyone who helped them.
• Kansas–Nebraska Act (1854): This law allowed people in Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. This idea, called "popular sovereignty," led to violence as pro-slavery and anti-slavery groups clashed.

Laws During and After the Civil War

• Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves (1862): During the Civil War, this law stopped the U.S. military from returning escaped enslaved people to their former owners.
• Enrollment Act (1863): This law started the draft for the Union Army. It led to riots in some cities, especially New York City, where African Americans suffered greatly.
• Black Codes (1865–66): After slavery ended, Southern states passed these laws to limit the rights of newly freed Black people. They restricted voting, economic chances, and forced harsh labor contracts.
• Civil Rights Act of 1866: This landmark law declared that all people born in the U.S. were citizens, regardless of their race or if they had been enslaved. It was a huge step toward equal rights.
• Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands (1866): Also known as the Freedmen's Bureau, this organization was set up to help newly freed African Americans with relief, education, and jobs.
• Naturalization Act of 1870: This law allowed people of African descent to become U.S. citizens.
• Enforcement Acts (1870-1871): These laws were passed to protect the rights of African Americans, especially their voting rights, and to fight against groups like the Ku Klux Klan.
• Amnesty Act (1872): This law removed voting and office-holding restrictions from former supporters of the Confederacy.
• Civil Rights Act of 1875: This law aimed to ensure equal treatment in public places like hotels and transportation, and it banned excluding Black people from jury service. However, the Supreme Court later struck down parts of it.
• Posse Comitatus Act (1878): This law limited the federal government's power to use the U.S. Army to enforce laws within the country. It marked the end of the military's role in the South during the Reconstruction Era.
• Morrill Land Grant Colleges Act (1890): This law required states to either not discriminate based on race in college admissions or create separate colleges for Black students. This led to the creation of many historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
• Racial Integrity Act of 1924: This Virginia law banned marriage between people of different races and created the "one-drop rule," which said that even one drop of African ancestry made a person Black.

Laws of the Modern Civil Rights Era

• Civil Rights Act of 1957: This law created the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to investigate civil rights issues.
• Civil Rights Act of 1960: This law gave the federal government more power to oversee voter registration.
• Civil Rights Act of 1964: This is one of the most important civil rights laws. It banned discrimination in jobs, public places, and schools. It was a major victory for the Civil Rights Movement.
• Economic Opportunity Act of 1964: This law was part of President Lyndon B. Johnson's "War on Poverty" and aimed to help low-income Americans.
• Voting Rights Act of 1965: This crucial law protected the voting rights of all ethnic minorities. It outlawed unfair practices like literacy tests that were used to stop Black people from voting.
• Civil Rights Act of 1968: This law, also known as the Fair Housing Act, banned discrimination in housing.
• Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972: This law gave the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) the power to sue in federal courts when it found job discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
• Equal Credit Opportunity Act (1974): This law made it illegal for lenders to discriminate against loan applicants based on race.
• Community Reinvestment Act (1977): This law aimed to stop "redlining," a practice where banks avoided investing in certain neighborhoods, often those with many minority residents.
• Civil Rights Act of 1991: This law gave people the right to a jury trial in job discrimination lawsuits.
• Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (1995): This law required harsher penalties for hate crimes.
• Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act (2007): This law allowed violent crimes against African Americans committed before 1970 to be reopened and investigated.
• Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act (2009): This law allowed federal authorities to investigate and prosecute hate crimes.
• Emmett Till Antilynching Act (2022): This law finally made lynching a federal crime, named in honor of Emmett Till, a young Black boy who was lynched in 1955.

The U.S. Constitution and Amendments

The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Over time, parts of it have been added or interpreted in ways that greatly affected African Americans.

Constitutional Clauses (Original Text)

• Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 (Three-Fifths Compromise): This clause said that enslaved people would be counted as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of deciding how many representatives each state would have in Congress. This compromise gave Southern states more power in government.
• Article I, Section 9, Clause 1: This clause prevented Congress from banning the international slave trade before 1808.
• Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3 (Fugitive Slave Clause): This clause required that enslaved people who escaped to other states be returned to their owners.

Important Amendments

Amendments are changes or additions to the Constitution. Several amendments were crucial for African American rights.

• Thirteenth Amendment (1865): This amendment officially abolished slavery in the United States. It was a monumental change after the Civil War.
• Fourteenth Amendment (1868): This amendment granted U.S. citizenship to all people born in the country, including African Americans. It also guaranteed "due process" and "equal protection" under the law for all citizens.
• Fifteenth Amendment (1870): This amendment guaranteed voting rights for all male U.S. citizens, including African Americans.
• Nineteenth Amendment (1920): This amendment granted women the right to vote, which also extended to African American women.
• Twenty-fourth Amendment (1964): This amendment abolished the poll tax in federal elections. Poll taxes were fees people had to pay to vote, often used to stop poor African Americans from casting ballots.

Key Federal Court Decisions

The U.S. Supreme Court and other federal courts have made many decisions that shaped the lives of African Americans. Some decisions upheld discrimination, while others fought for equality.

Early Decisions (Before Civil War)

• North Carolina v. Mann (1830): This ruling stated that slaveholders had absolute power over enslaved people, even allowing violence against them.
• Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857): This was a terrible decision. The Supreme Court ruled that African Americans, whether enslaved or free, were not U.S. citizens and had no rights that white people were bound to respect. It also said that Congress could not ban slavery in new territories, effectively overturning the Missouri Compromise.

Decisions During and After Reconstruction

• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896): This infamous ruling established the "separate but equal" doctrine. It said that racial segregation, like separate schools or train cars for Black and white people, was legal as long as the facilities were supposedly equal. This decision allowed Jim Crow laws to spread across the South.
• Guinn v. United States (1915): This ruling found that certain "grandfather clause" provisions in Southern states, which allowed people to vote only if their grandfathers had voted, were unconstitutional. These clauses were used to prevent Black people from voting.
• Nixon v. Herndon (1927) and Nixon v. Condon (1932): These cases ruled that all-white primary elections in Texas, which stopped Black people from voting in the most important election, were unconstitutional.
• Powell v. Alabama (1932): This case involved the "Scottsboro Boys," nine Black teenagers wrongly accused of a crime. The Court reversed their conviction, saying they had not received a fair trial.
• Gaines v. Canada (1938): This ruling said that states providing public education must offer educational opportunities to Black students, even if it meant creating separate facilities.
• Smith v. Allwright (1944): This decision finally and clearly banned all-white primary elections.
• Shelley v. Kraemer (1948): This ruling made it illegal for courts to enforce housing agreements that prevented ethnic minorities from living in certain neighborhoods.
• Sweatt v. Painter (1950) and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950): These cases challenged the "separate but equal" idea in higher education, ruling against segregation at public universities.
• Henderson v. United States (1950): This decision abolished segregation in dining cars on trains.

Landmark Civil Rights Decisions (Mid-20th Century)

• Brown v. Board of Education (1954): This is one of the most important Supreme Court decisions ever. It overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and declared that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. The Court said that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." This decision sparked the desegregation of schools across the country.
• NAACP v. Alabama (1958): This ruling protected the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) from having to reveal its membership lists, which would have put its members at risk.
• Boynton v. Virginia (1960): This ruling made segregation on public transportation illegal for interstate travel.
• Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States (1964): This decision upheld the Civil Rights Act of 1964, saying that Congress had the power to ban discrimination in public places.
• Loving v. Virginia (1967): This historic ruling declared that laws banning marriage between people of different races were unconstitutional.
• Jones v. Mayer (1968): This decision upheld the Fair Housing Act of 1968, stating that Congress could regulate the sale of private property to prevent racial discrimination.
• Green v. School Board of New Kent County (1968): This ruling said that "Freedom of Choice" plans, which allowed students to choose their schools but often resulted in continued segregation, were not enough to desegregate schools.
• Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971): This decision upheld the use of busing students to different schools as a way to achieve desegregation.
• Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978): This ruling said that while affirmative action programs (which aim to help groups that have faced discrimination) were allowed, using strict quotas for admissions was not.
• Batson v. Kentucky (1986): This decision ruled that prosecutors cannot remove potential jurors from a trial just because of their race.
• Shelby County v. Holder (2013): This controversial ruling struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which had required certain states with a history of discrimination to get federal approval before changing their voting laws. This decision made it harder to enforce voting rights protections.

Executive Orders and Proclamations

Presidents can issue executive orders and proclamations, which are directives that have the force of law. Many of these have had a direct impact on African Americans.

• Emancipation Proclamation (1862): Issued by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, this proclamation declared that all enslaved people in Confederate states (states that had left the Union) were free. While it didn't immediately free all enslaved people, it changed the goal of the war to include ending slavery.
• Executive Order 8802 (1942): Issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II, this order banned racial discrimination in government departments and defense industries. It also created a committee to ensure compliance.
• Executive Order 9981 (1948): Issued by President Harry S. Truman, this important order desegregated the U.S. Armed Forces, meaning Black and white soldiers would serve together.
• Executive Order 10925 (1961): Issued by President John F. Kennedy, this order created the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity and required equal opportunity in federal jobs and the military.
• Executive Order 11063 (1962): Also by President John F. Kennedy, this order banned segregation in housing that received federal funding.
• Executive Order 11246 (1965): Issued by President Lyndon B. Johnson, this order prohibited discrimination in employment decisions based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

Federal Agencies and Organizations

Several government agencies and other groups have been created to address civil rights and support African Americans.

• Freedmen's Bureau (1865-1868): This agency was set up after the Civil War to help newly freed African Americans and poor white people in the South.
• Civil Rights Commission (created 1957): This independent agency investigates and reports on civil rights issues.
• Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice (created 1957): This part of the Justice Department works to enforce federal civil rights laws.
• Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (created 1964): The EEOC works to prevent and remedy discrimination in the workplace.
• Head Start Program (created 1965): This program provides early childhood education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services to low-income children and families.
• Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (created 1968): This office within the Department of Housing and Urban Development works to enforce fair housing laws.

Important Organizations and Individuals

Throughout history, many organizations and individuals have fought for the rights of African Americans.

• American Anti-Slavery Society: An early group that worked to abolish slavery.
• African Methodist Episcopal Church: A historically Black Christian denomination that played a vital role in the Black community and civil rights.
• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP): Founded in 1909, the NAACP is one of the oldest and most influential civil rights organizations, fighting for racial equality through legal challenges and advocacy.
• National Council of Negro Women: An organization that works to advance the rights and opportunities of Black women.
• Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC): A civil rights organization led by Martin Luther King Jr., known for its nonviolent protests.
• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC): A student-led civil rights group that played a key role in sit-ins and voter registration drives.
• Black Panther Party: A political organization founded in 1966 that advocated for Black power and self-defense.
• Black Lives Matter movement: A modern movement that campaigns against violence and systemic racism toward Black people.

See also

• African American history
• Jim Crow Laws
• Civil rights movement (1896–1954)
• Civil Rights Movement