Challenges Of Reconstruction

Social and economic challenges played significant parts in drafting constitutional amendments and molding civil rights of individuals during the Reconstruction Era. The Thirteenth through Fifteenth Amendments were recognized as the Civil War Amendments because they were put in place directly following the war. Their purpose was to secure the ending of enslavement and give recently emancipated slaves equal protection and rights in the U.S. The Thirteenth Amendment was first put in place to abolish slavery and all forms of involuntary servitude, except for penance of a crime. According to American Nineteenth Century History, “Taken together these different factors demonstrated conclusively that civil rights in South Carolina during the 1800’s
In a group of Supreme Court cases, a clear majority found the Civil Rights Act within 1875 unconstitutional, because Congress lacked the power to allocate private affairs under the Fourteenth Amendment. The decisions came to the controversial conclusion to prohibited denial of equal protection by state. The formal judgment took power away from Congress to regulate private acts, because black suffrage, in their eyes was the result of conduct by private individuals, not state law or action. The Supreme Court ruling lead to each respective southern state, drafting their own adaptation of the constitution. Their individual constitutions included voting clauses, segregation, discrimination, and imprisonments without trial and due process. The final decisions in these major cases impacted many individuals and state officials, as well as damaged the civil rights of blacks and other minorities throughout the
An example occurs in 1986, with Supreme Court ruling Jackson Board of Education Vs. Wygant. This incident challenged the school board guidelines of defending minority employees by laying off non-minority educators first, even though the non-minority had been working there longer. The Supreme Court judged against the Jackson Board of Education, maintaining that the grievance suffered by non-minorities, couldn’t constitute the benefits to minorities. In the 2016 case, University of Texas Vs. Fisher, a contrary decision ruled in favor of University of Texas when a non-minority undergraduate admissions student was under scrutiny from the school’s race-sensitive admissions policy. In a 4-3 conclusion, the majority upheld the affirmative action of the school’s admissions process. This was much like the Gutter v. Bollinger Supreme Court decision impacting society in 2003. The court ruled in favor of the University of Michigan’s Law School’s affirmative admissions policy in yet another split decision of a 5-4 vote. The admissions student, Barbara Grutter, sued the university in violation of civil rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, accusing respondents of discrimination bases on her