Affirmative Action

7 Pages 1738 Words

ograms were enacted to help African Americans become full citizens of the United States. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution made slavery illegal, the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law, and the Fifteenth Amendment forbids racial discrimination in voting rights. The 1866 Civil Rights Act guarantees every citizen "the same right to make and enforce contracts...as is enjoyed by white citizens" (Sykes 123) In 1896, the Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson upheld a "separate, but equal" doctrine that proved to be anything but equal for African Americans. The decision marked the end of the post-Civil War reconstruction era as Jim Crow laws spread across the South (Sykes 131). In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, which outlawed “segregationist hiring policies by defense-related industries that held federal contracts (Lewis 7).” Roosevelt's signing of this order was a direct result of efforts by black trade union leaders.

During 1953 President Harry S. Truman's Committee on Government Contract Compliance urged the Bureau of Employment Security "to act positively and affirmatively to implement the policy of nondiscrimination..." (Sykes 223) Other equal protection laws passed to make discrimination illegal were the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Title ...