The Civil Rights Act of 1875
An act to protect all citizens in their civil and legal affairs.
Whereas it is essential to just government we recognize the equality of all men before the law, and hold that it is the duty of government in its dealings with the people to mete out equal and exact justice to all, of whatever nativity, race, color, or persuasion, religious or political; and it being the appropriate object of legislation to enact great fundamental principles into law: Therefore,
Be it enacted, That all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement; subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law, and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude.
Known as the Second Civil Rights Act of 1875, the law was passed by Congress in an attempt to protect the civil equality of Negroes by giving them equal rights to public accommodations and to act as jurors. The first Civil Rights Act, passed over Andrew Johnson's veto in 1866, had been supplanted by the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution (see Appendix X). This act was made unenforceable by two later Supreme Court decisions: the Civil Rights Cases in 1883 and the more significant Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1896, which negated this law's protections as well as diminishing those in the Fourteenth Amendment.