Civil Rights Act of 1866 was a United States law that guaranteed various legal rights of Black people who had been enslaved. Slavery had been abolished the year before, after the end of the American Civil War. But many governments in the Southern States had soon passed laws that limited the rights of African Americans. President Andrew Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Act, but Congress approved the law over the president’s veto.
After Union armies defeated the Confederacy in 1865, many Southern State governments returned to the control of former Confederates. These governments soon passed laws that became known as the black codes. Some black codes prohibited African Americans from owning land or carrying firearms. Others established a nightly curfew for Black people or permitted authorities to jail them for being jobless. Many white Southerners joined or supported terror campaigns against African Americans attempting to vote, run for public office, or simply claim other basic civil rights. In 1865 and 1866, about 5,000 African Americans were murdered in the South. Millions of formerly enslaved people lived in desperate poverty, and many were forced into living and labor arrangements that strongly resembled slavery.
The black codes and increasing violence toward African Americans shocked a powerful group of Northern senators and representatives called Radical Republicans. These congressmen were angered at efforts to deprive newly freed people of their rights soon after so many Union soldiers had sacrificed their lives to end slavery. Lyman Trumbull, a Republican from Illinois, introduced the Civil Rights Act to the Senate in January 1866. The Senate approved the bill in February, and the House of Representatives voted to pass it the following month. President Johnson, however, opposed federal protection of the rights of African Americans, and he vetoed the bill on March 27. Johnson, who hoped that the Southern States would quickly rejoin the Union, feared the passage of such laws would cause longstanding political tensions. Johnson said he preferred that the states handle such questions.
Congress required a two-thirds majority to override the president’s veto. On April 6, the Senate voted, 33-15, to overturn the veto. On April 9, three-fourths of House members voted for the act. The act—titled “An Act to protect all Persons in the United States in their Civil Rights, and furnish the Means of their Vindication”—became the first civil rights act in the United States. It was also the first major law in U.S. history to be approved over a president’s veto. The act granted full rights to all citizens regardless of skin color. It also established the means for law enforcement agencies to enforce the law and for federal courts to try offenders.
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 gave African Americans the rights and privileges of full citizenship. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution, passed in June 1866 and ratified in 1868, further guaranteed the citizenship of blacks. African Americans would not receive full voting rights, however, until the passage of the 15th Amendment in 1870. Most white Southerners resented the new status of African Americans. Many white people simply could not accept the idea of formerly enslaved people voting and holding office. As a result, attempts by Black Southerners to claim their civil rights were met by threats and violence from such groups as the newly formed Ku Klux Klan. The federal government resisted such efforts to deprive African Americans of their rights. In 1867, Congress passed a series of laws called the Reconstruction Acts, which abolished state governments in the South and outlined the process of readmission for the Southern States that still had not rejoined the Union. In 1870 and 1871, Congress passed laws authorizing the use of federal troops to enforce new voting rights laws.
