The Civil Rights Act of 1866, 14 Stat. 27-30, enacted April 9, 1866, is a United States federal law that was mainly intended to protect the civil rights of African-Americans, in the wake of the American Civil War. The Act was enacted by Congress in 1865 but vetoed by President Andrew Johnson. In April 1866 Congress again passed the bill. Although Johnson again vetoed it, a two-thirds majority in each house overcame the veto and the bill became law.
Read more about Civil Rights Act Of 1866: Content, Enactment, Constitutionalization, and Reenactment, Aftermath and Consequences
Famous quotes containing the words civil rights act, civil rights, civil, rights and/or act:
“... one of the blind spots of most Negroes is their failure to realize that small overtures from whites have a large significance ... I now realize that this feeling inevitably takes possession of one in the bitter struggle for equality. Indeed, I share it. Yet I wonder how we can expect total acceptance to step full grown from the womb of prejudice, with no embryo or infancy or childhood stages.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 10 (1962)
“... as a result of generations of betrayal, it’s nearly impossible for Southern Negroes to trust a Southern white. No matter what he does or what he suffers, a white liberal is never established beyond suspicion in the hearts of the minority.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 2, ch. 10 (1962)
“Standards of conduct appropriate to civil society or the workings of a democracy cannot be purely and simply applied to the Church.”
—Joseph Ratzinger (b. 1927)
“A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger to its neighbors as well: internal arbitrary rule will be reflected in arbitrary external relations. The suppression of public opinion, the abolition of public competition for power and its public exercise opens the way for the state power to arm itself in any way it sees fit.... A state that does not hesitate to lie to its own people will not hesitate to lie to other states.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“To perceive means to immobilize ... we seize, in the act of perception, something which outruns perception itself.”
—Henri Bergson (1859–1941)