“I am an American; born free and raised freely, where I recognize no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit. » -- Theodore Roosevelt --The Civil Rights Act of 1866, signed into law on April 9, 1866, was a law intended to protect all persons in the United States in their civil rights and to provide the means of vindication. "Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that all persons born within the United States of the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding non-taxed Indians, are hereby declared citizens of the United States; and such citizens, of every race and color, without regard to any prerequisite of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime of which the party shall have been duly convicted, shall have the same right, in every State and territory of the United States, to enter into and execute contracts, to sue, to be parties to and to witness, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold and convey real and personal property , and to have the full and equal benefit of all laws and procedures for the security of person and property, enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to the same pains, penalties and penalties, and to no other, to any law, statute , order, regulation or custom to the contrary, notwithstanding. The law passed in 1866 was the first civil rights law approved by Congress to grant African Americans equal status under the law, but it would take more than a century to end the legal oppression of African Americans . Additional civil rights laws were passed in 1871 (Enforcement Acts), the Civil Rights Act of 1875, ...... middle of paper ...... dation and violence, including lynching, constituted an ever-present danger. African Americans in the North were not spared and suffered from the same widespread discrimination and educational and residential segregation. practices finally began to give way. During this period, African Americans and their allies finally confronted long-standing oppression, injustices, and prejudices as a unified movement for integration. Instead, it became a movement of total liberation and identity. Events like the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which banned segregated education, and in 1956, Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat, which ended the boycott Montgomery Buses, marked the beginning of the civil rights movement..