The Dormancy Of The Equal Protection Of The Laws Clause In American Constitution And The Loss Of Black People's Civil Rights After American Civil War

The Congress of the United States constituted the "Equal protection of the laws Clause" in the Fourteenth Amendment to protect the black people's rights during the Reconstruction. The original intention of the Equal Protection of the Laws Clause was to protect the black people's equal rights. But after the Reconstruction, the southern states deprived the black people's suffrage through evading the Equal Protection of the laws Clause, and established racial segregation in the South. It actually made the Equal Protection of the Laws Clause dormant on the aspect of protecting the black people's rights before the 1950's.The pivot of this thesis is to explore why Equal Protection of the Laws Clause was dormant on the aspect of protecting the black people's rights after the Reconstruction. This thesis is divided into five parts.Part one concerns about the establishment and dormancy of the Equal Protection of the laws Clause. The black people gained the civil rights, especially the voting right, and the Equal Protection of the Laws Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to protect their rights during the Reconstruction. But the Equal Protection of the Laws Clause was in fact dormant after the Reconstruction on the aspect of protecting the black people's constitutional rights and the black people's rights were deprived length by length. Finally, racial segregation was established in the South.Part two deals with the self-matters of the Equal protection of the Laws Clause for its own dormancy. During the drafting process of this Clause, the dictions of the Clause became more and more ambiguous, and the words concerning about the political rights were omitted from this Clause. The final text of the Equal protection of the Laws Clause was a compromise of the two factions in the Republican. Moreover, the constitutionality of the Equal Protection of the Laws Clause was uncertain both in the drafting process of the Congress and in the ratification of the several states. As a result, the constitutionality and authority of this Clause was weakened so greatly that this Clause gradually become dormant on the aspect of protecting the black people's civil rights after the Reconstruction.Part three discusses the political factors for the dormancy of the Equal Protection of the laws Clause. After the Reconstruction, the Congress, step by step, kept silence on the racial problems, and its attention was concentrated increasingly on the policy of economy for the lose the Republican control of the House of Representatives and the beginning of the industrialization. Besides, the compromise of the northern liberalists and the black leader's self-identity to the white's ideologies gave other impetuses for the dormancy of the Equal Protection of the laws Clause.Part four analyses the legal factors for the dormancy of the Equal Protection of the laws Clause. The conservative attitude of the Federal Supreme Court, especially the strict construction of the Equal Protection of the Laws Clause and the arguments for the formal equality instead of the substantive equality, greatly limited the effect of the Equal Protection of the laws Clause.Part five talks about some influences of the Equal Protection of the laws Clause's dormancy. The dormancy of the Equal Protection of the Laws Clause brought bad affect to the black people's enjoyment of the civil rights for the lack of the constitutional protection, and deteriorated the racial relation in American society. The white racialists consolidated the white supremacy through their violence to the black people. At the meantime, the black people's social status as share-croppers, after the loss of their civil rights, badly blocked the development of the southern economy. Furthermore, it is also a kind of shame of American democracy for the black people's descending to the second-class citizen in American society.