Evolution of Human Rights in the U.S.

Removal of Native Americans to reservations.

○ No choice was given, as reservations were mandatory.

Treaties signed between American Indians and Colonial powers in the 17th and 18th centuries, and then between tribes and American officials in the late 18th and 19th centuries, resulted time and again in either the reduction of aboriginal lands or the relocation of Native Americans from their ancestral homes to designated areas where they lived and governed with limited independence.

The Indian Removal Act, signed by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830, was an unprecedented legal maneuver that gave the president the power to make treaties with every tribe east of the Mississippi, ultimately forcing them to surrender their lands in exchange for territory in the West.

● Introduction of the concept of “separate but equal.”

Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. The case stemmed from an 1892 incident in which African American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a car for blacks. Rejecting Plessy’s argument that his constitutional rights were violated, the Supreme Court ruled that a law that “implies merely a legal distinction” between whites and blacks was not unconstitutional.

○ Permitted segregation of public places.

After the United States abolished slavery, black Americans continued to be marginalized through enforced segregated and diminished access to facilities, housing, education—and opportunities.

Segregation was the practice of requiring separate housing, education and other services for people of color. Segregation was made law several times in 18th and 19th-century America as some believed that black and white people were incapable of coexisting. 

In the lead-up to the liberation of slaves under the Thirteenth Amendment, abolitionists argued about what the fate of slaves should be once they were freed. One group argued for colonization, either by returning the slaves to Africa or creating their own homeland. In 1862 President Abraham Lincoln recognized the ex-slave countries of Haiti and Liberia, hoping to open up channels for colonization, with Congress allocating $600,000 to help. While the colonization plan did not pan out, the country, instead, set forth on a path of legally mandated segregation. 

●  Historical separation of male and female roles and denial of full rights to women until the 19th amendment 1920.

The 19th amendment guarantees all American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle; victory took decades of agitation and protest. Beginning in the mid-19th century, several generations of woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered a radical change of the Constitution. Few early supporters lived to see final victory in 1920

●  Internment of American citizens of Japanese descent.

Japanese internment camps were established during World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt through his Executive Order 9066. From 1942 to 1945, it was the policy of the U.S. government that people of Japanese descent would be interred in isolated camps. Enacted in reaction to Pearl Harbor and the ensuing war, the Japanese internment camps are now considered one of the most atrocious violations of American civil rights in the 20th century.