Editing Civil Rights Act (section)

==Background==
{{further|Reconstruction era}}
{{further|Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction era}}

The first shift towards equality for African Americans occurred when President [[Abraham Lincoln]] passed the [[Emancipation Proclamation]] in 1863, which declared that "all persons held as slaves... shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free...".<ref>{{Cite web|title=Image 1 of The first edition of Abraham Lincoln's final emancipation proclamation.|url=https://www.loc.gov/resource/lprbscsm.scsm1016/?sp=1|access-date=2021-10-03|website=Library of Congress| date=January 1863 }}</ref>  As initially ratified, the [[United States Constitution]] granted each state complete discretion to determine voter qualifications for its residents.<ref>United States Constitution art. I, sec. 2, cl. 1</ref><ref name="Bending">{{cite book|last=May|first=Gary|title=Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy|publisher=Basic Books|location=New York, NY|isbn=978-0-465-01846-8|date=April 9, 2013|edition=Kindle|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/bendingtowardjus0000mayg}}</ref>{{rp|50}}

In American history, the [[Reconstruction era]] was the period from 1865-1877 following the end of the [[American Civil War]]. This period was marked by various attempts made to redress the inequities imposed on African Americans through slavery.<ref name="britannica.com">{{Cite web|title=Reconstruction {{!}} Definition, Summary, Timeline & Facts {{!}} Britannica|url=https://www.britannica.com/event/Reconstruction-United-States-history|access-date=2021-12-14|website=www.britannica.com|language=en}}</ref> Three [[Reconstruction Amendments]] were ratified and limited this discretion. The [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Thirteenth Amendment]] (1865) prohibits [[slavery in the United States|slavery]] "except as a punishment for crime"; the [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fourteenth Amendment]] (1868) grants [[citizenship in the United States|citizenship]] to anyone "born or naturalized in the United States" and guarantees every person [[Due Process Clause|due process]] and [[Equal Protection Clause|equal protection]] rights; and the [[Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fifteenth Amendment]] (1870) provides that "[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."
These amendments were established to provide African Americans the same civil rights as white Americans, and also empower [[Congress of the United States|Congress]] to [[Congressional power of enforcement|enforce]] their provisions through "appropriate legislation".<ref>{{cite web|title=Landmark Legislation: Thirteenth, Fourteenth, & Fifteenth Amendments|url=https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/CivilWarAmendments.htm|publisher=United States Senate|access-date=June 25, 2015}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=U.S. Senate: Landmark Legislation: Thirteenth, Fourteenth, & Fifteenth Amendments|url=https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/CivilWarAmendments.htm|access-date=2021-12-14|website=www.senate.gov}}</ref> This time period marked the beginnings of the [[Civil rights movement|Civil Rights Movement]].<ref>{{Cite web|title=Civil Rights Movement|url=https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/civil-rights-movement|access-date=2021-12-14|website=HISTORY|language=en}}</ref>

To enforce the Reconstruction Amendments, Congress passed the [[Enforcement Acts]] in the 1870s. The acts criminalized the obstruction of a citizen's [[voting rights]] and provided for federal supervision of the electoral process, including [[voter registration]].<ref name=Carolina>{{Source-attribution|sentence=yes|''[[South Carolina v. Katzenbach]]'', {{ussc|383|301|1966}}}}</ref>{{rp|310}} By 1873, Supreme Court decisions began to limit the scope of Reconstruction legislation, and many whites resorted to intimidation and violence to undermine African Americans' voting rights.<ref name="britannica.com"/> In 1875 the [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court]] struck down parts of the legislation as unconstitutional in ''[[United States v. Cruikshank]]'' and ''[[United States v. Reese]]''.<ref name=democracy>{{cite book|last1=Issacharoff|first1=Samuel|last2=Karlan|first2=Pamela S.|last3=Pildes|first3=Richard H.|title=The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process|year=2012|publisher=Foundation Press|location=New York, NY|isbn=978-1-59941-935-0|edition=4th}}</ref>{{rp|97}}

The [[Compromise of 1877]], an informal agreement to resolve a political dispute, marked the end of the Reconstruction era.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Compromise of 1877|url=https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/compromise-of-1877|access-date=2021-12-14|website=HISTORY|date=November 27, 2019 |language=en}}</ref> After the [[Reconstruction Era]] ended in 1877, enforcement of these civil rights laws ceased, and in 1894, Congress repealed most of their provisions.<ref name=Carolina />{{rp|310}} Southern Democrats largely stopped adhering to the provisions of Reconstruction legislation, ceasing to intervene in Southern voting practices, which prompted widespread disenfranchisement of African American voters during and after Reconstruction. From 1868 to 1888, [[electoral fraud]] and violence throughout the South suppressed the [[African-American]] vote.<ref name="Direct">{{cite web|last1=Anderson|first1=Elizabeth|last2=Jones|first2=Jeffery|title=Race, Voting Rights, and Segregation: Direct Disenfranchisement|work=The Geography of Race in the United States|url=http://www.umich.edu/~lawrace/disenfranchise1.htm|date=September 2002|publisher=University of Michigan|access-date=August 3, 2013}}</ref> From 1888 to 1908, Southern states legalized disenfranchisement by enacting [[Jim Crow laws]]; they amended their [[State constitution (United States)|constitutions]] and passed legislation to impose various voting restrictions, including [[literacy test]]s, [[Poll tax (United States)|poll taxes]], property-ownership requirements, moral character tests, requirements that voter registration applicants interpret particular documents, and [[grandfather clause]]s that allowed otherwise-ineligible persons to vote if their grandfathers voted (which excluded many African Americans whose grandfathers had been slaves or otherwise ineligible).<ref name="Carolina" /><ref name="Direct" /> During this period, the Supreme Court generally upheld efforts to discriminate against racial minorities. In ''[[Giles v. Harris]]'' (1903), the court held that regardless of the Fifteenth Amendment, the [[federal judiciary of the United States|judiciary]] did not have the remedial power to force states to register racial minorities to vote.<ref name=democracy />{{rp|100}}