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:
“... two great areas of deafness existed in the South: White Southerners had no ears to hear that which threatened their Dream. And colored Southerners had none to hear that which could reduce their anger.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 16 (1962)
“... 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)
“Just what is the civil law? What neither influence can affect, nor power break, nor money corrupt: were it to be suppressed or even merely ignored or inadequately observed, no one would feel safe about anything, whether his own possessions, the inheritance he expects from his father, or the bequests he makes to his children.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)
“If the veil were withdrawn from the sanctuary of domestic life, and man could look upon the fear, the loathing, the detestations which his tyranny and reckless gratification of self has caused to take the place of confiding love, which placed a woman in his power, he would shudder at the hideous wrong of the present regulations of the domestic abode.”
—Lydia Jane Pierson, U.S. women’s rights activist and corresponding editor of The Woman’s Advocate. The Woman’s Advocate, represented in The Lily, pp. 117-8 (1855-1858 or 1860)
“In a democracy dissent is an act if faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but its effects.”
—J. William Fulbright (1905–19)