Commission on Civil Rights.

In 1870 and 1875, Congress enacted civil rights legislation to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, but within eight years, the Supreme Court declared the later legislation unconstitutional. Before the nineteenth century ended, the civil rights of African Americans would be further eroded by the Court’s ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and the actions of southern state legislatures in the wake of the decision. Although demand grew for federal civil rights legislation during the New Deal of the 1930’s, southern congressmen blocked all attempts to pass such laws.