CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1875 18 Stat. 335

On his deathbed Senator charles sumner (Republican, Mass.) implored a congressional friend, "You must take care of the civil rights bill,—my bill, the civil rights bill, don't let it fail." Since 1870 Sumner had sought to persuade Congress to enact a law guaranteeing to all people, regardless of race or religion, the same accommodations and facilities in public schools, churches and cemeteries incorporated by public authority, places of public amusement, hotels licensed by law, and common carriers. Sumner had contended that racial segregation was discriminatory, that separate but equal facilities were inherently unequal, and that compulsory equality would combat prejudice as much as compulsory segregation fostered it. Opponents claimed that the fourteenth amendment protected the privileges of United States citizenship only, not those of state citizenship to which the bulk of civil rights attached. Opponents also claimed that Congress had no constitutional power to protect civil rights from violation by private persons or businesses.

School desegregation was unpopular among northern Republicans and hated by southern Democrats. After the election of 1874 resulted in a Democratic victory in the House, supporters of Sumner's bill settled for "half a loaf" by consenting to the deletion of the provisions on education, churches, and cemeteries. A black congressman from South Carolina agreed to the compromise because the school clause jeopardized the Republican party in the South and subordinated the educational needs of blacks to their right to be desegregated. Teaching the "three Rs" to the children of former slaves was more important than risking their educational opportunities by demanding their admission to "white" schools.

In February 1875 the lame-duck 43rd Congress, 2nd session, voting along party lines in both houses, passed the modified bill which President ulysses s. grant signed into law on March 1. The Civil Rights Act of 1875, the last Reconstruction measure and the last civil rights act until 1957, was the most important congressional enactment in the field of public accommodations until the civil rights act of 1964. The act of 1875 affirmed the equality of all persons in the enjoyment of transportation facilities, in hotels and inns, and in theaters and places of public amusement. Theoretically such businesses, though privately owned and operated, were like public utilities, exercising public functions for the benefit of the public and subject to public regulation. Anyone violating the statute was civilly liable for $500 damages and, on conviction in federal court, subject to a fine of not more than $1,000 or imprisonment for not more than one year. In 1883 the Supreme Court held the statute unconstitutional in the civil rights cases.

Leonard W. Levy
(1986)

Bibliography

Konvitz, Milton R. 1961 A Century of Civil Rights. New York: Columbia University Press.