The Evolution Of The Civil Rights Of The African Americans In American Constitutional History

African Americans are one of the most important minorities in America. In the four hundred years of their history, the civil rights of the African Americans have changed tremendously. From the angle of constitutional history, this thesis tries to study the changes of the civil rights of the African Americans, and analyzes its causes. We explore a series of important events relating to the civil rights of the African Americans in the American constitutional history. They include American constitution and its amendments, some laws enacted by Congress, and some cases judged by the Supreme Court.The changes of the civil rights of the Black Americans were caused by the transformation of the American socioeconomic conditions. American history is a history of the ceaseless development of social economy, democracy, and the civil rights of African American. The author believes that the existence of slavery was caused not only by the rapacity and improbity, but also by the low socioeconomic level of that time. The complete social equality of the Blacks after World Warâ…¡was the result of the development of American social economy.This paper is composed of four chapters. Chapterâ… deals with the first stage of the development of Black civil rights, from the year 1789 to Civil War. During this period, the African Americans were slaves with no civil rights. This chapter contains three events in the constitutional history, i.e. the establishment of slavery in the 1789 Constitution, the abolitionism movement, and the case of Scot v. Sandford in 1857.Chapterâ…¡talks about the second stage of Black civil rights, from Civil War to World Warâ…¡. During this period, the African Americans had got rid of the status of slave, but they still suffered a lot from racial segregation as second-class citizenry. This chapter contains Reconstruction Amendments and the case of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896.Chapterâ…¢discusses the third stage of Black civil rights, from World Warâ…¡to date. At this stage, the African Americans have achieved complete civil rights. This chapter comprises the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and other advancements of civil rights of African Americans after 1970.Chapterâ…£analyzes the evolvement of the civil rights of African Americans, including the changes of the human right conception of the whites, the attitudes of the Justices, and the social economy.