“I am an American; born and of free race, where I recognize no man as my superior, except in his worth, or as my inferior, except in his demerit. "- Theodore Roosevelt --The Civil Rights Act of 1866 enacted April 9, 2019 1866, was a law designed to protect all persons in the United States in their civil rights and to provide means of justification. "Be enacted by the Senate and the House of the Representatives of the United States of America assembled in Congress, that all persons born in the United States and not subject to a foreign power, excluding untaxed Indians, are declared citizens of the United States; and such citizens, of every race and color, without regard to any former condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime of which the party has been duly convicted, shall have the same right, in every State and territory of the United States , make and enforce contracts, sue, be a party to and give evidence, inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold and convey real and personal property, and have full and equal benefit from all laws and proceedings for the safety of person and property, such as that enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to similar punishments, sufferings and sanctions, and to no other, notwithstanding any law, statute, ordinance, regulation or custom, notwithstanding the contrary. the law passed in 1866 was the first Civil Rights Act legislation passed by Congress to grant African Americans equal status before the law, but it would take more than a century to end the legal oppression of African Americans. Further civil rights laws were passed in 1871 (Enforcement Acts), the Civil Rights Act of 1875, ... half of the document ... dation and violence, including lynching, were an ever-present danger. North African Americans were not unscathed and suffered the same widespread school and residential discrimination and segregation. It was not until the modern civil rights movement of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, a period some call the Second, that these discriminatory laws and practices finally began to give way. During this time, African Americans and their allies finally addressed long-standing oppression, injustices, and prejudices as a unified movement for integration, rather than becoming a total identity and liberation movement. Events such as the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed segregated education, and in 1956, Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat, which gave rise to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, was the beginning of the civil rights movement.