Nine years after Emmett Till’s murder and Rosa Parks’ bus boycotts, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became national law. Forty-six years after the 1969 Stonewall Inn riots, the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling constitutionally protected the national right to same-sex marriage. Seventy-two years after the Seneca Falls Convention, the 19th Amendment finally protected American women’s right to vote. The United States has always been a country set on protecting the natural rights of humanity, but who we classify as humans has fluctuated, being as broad or as narrow as the American people fight to define it.
For centuries, Americans have fought for the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that our founding fathers preached but did not practice in many ways. Victories against slavery and legalized discrimination are some of the most prominent examples of our country's democracy in action. For most, these victories are a source of pride and patriotism. However, we have grown too comfortable in light of the ever-fading shadow of our country’s past progress.
During this year’s Intensive Study Week (ISW), some of my fellow Maret students and I participated in “Political Party in the USA,” visiting people involved in government in different ways and learning about America’s political system. As part of the program, we had the chance to talk with employees of the organization No Labels, which, as their website proclaims, pushes for “common sense,” middle-centric policies, and bipartisan cooperation in Congress. During our meeting, a Maret student asked a No Labels representative about their stance on the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and what plans they had to help revive legalized abortion. I anticipated that an organization preaching “common sense” politics would plan to support citizens’ right to healthcare. Instead, we learned that the organization takes more of a middle ground approach. A July 2023 Washington Post article outlined the group’s stance on the issue, noting “No Labels avoids taking a stand on what point in a pregnancy abortion should be allowed, but rather argues that the issue needs to be reframed with ‘empathy and respect’ to reflect the mixed results of public polling.” The representative then explained that she believed rights could never be rolled back; liberties, once given, could not be taken away.
But this is, in fact, not what history teaches us about rights. They are not fixed. If liberties, once given, could never be repealed, then Jim Crow laws would never have existed, women would have never had to protest at the president's doorstep for the right to vote, and LGBTQIA+ people would not have had to throw bricks in self-defense at the very people sworn to protect them.
Jim Crow laws ruled over the South for decades, even though the U.S. federal government had the power to stop it and rights had expanded in the aftermath of the Civil War. Poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses all blatantly violated the Fifteenth Amendment, which guarantees that the right of a citizen to vote “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Grandfather clauses were especially unconstitutional since they held that one could not vote if their grandfather, who was most likely part of the generation before Emancipation, could not vote.
People in the past had the tools, Constitutional amendments to fight for citizens' rights, in hand, but the Amendments alone were not enough to guarantee rights – activism was needed. The Jim Crow era did not come to an end until American citizens dedicated at least 15 years to organizing nationwide and state-specific protests. Prior to that time, it was easier for people who did not believe in equal rights to let racism infect the South instead. It was not until activism made politicians realize that both their and America’s popularity and support were in jeopardy that they finally acted to respect African American citizens' liberties. Most of the protesters mentioned were citizens who had citizenship and, therefore, had all the protections and liberties that the Constitution enshrined, but even they still had to fight against racism and for rights.
Constitutional guarantees are not guaranteed without activism. Women’s groups have also had to engage in struggles to obtain and hold rights, sure that they might be subtracted without vigilance. According to the Museum of the American Revolution’s exhibit titled “When Women Lost the Vote,” several states repealed women's right to vote in 1807, despite the Constitution declaring it a natural right of man – a word which could be interpreted as gender-neutral – and a precedent of women voting. LGBTQ+ citizens still had to fight for their lives and liberty against state-sanctioned police brutality, despite the Fourteenth Amendment declaring that “any State [shall not] deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Years ago, Americans had to band together and devote years of their lives to fight for the government’s recognition of the Constitutional rights promised to them. Today, we must continue that fight. While we can draw inspiration from our government’s rapid expansion of human rights, history has taught us that their recognition is not permanent.
With the new administration drawing inspiration from fascist morals, leveraging nationalism to claim that oppressing all minorities will bring greatness back to our country, we cannot ignore the path of tragedy we are headed down. Today, we can point exactly to the legislation and Constitutional rationale that extend liberty to all citizens. In the near future, however, this interpretation could change. The Supreme Court recently overturned Roe v. Wade through this pitfall. Mass human rights infringements will not remain a relic of the past if we stay inactive.
We cannot take comfort in past movements as proof of our government's devotion to liberty, but only as proof that our government can be forced to listen to the majority. If we want freedom, as Donald Trump’s supporters preach, we must work for it; the government does not give free handouts. It never did. Some may not understand this, but I pray the American people do. If not, the work of human rights movements – the pride of American history – would be in vain.