Federal Power, States' Rights, and Civil Rights

From the ratification of the Constitution in 1787 to the defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War in 1865, Americans disagreed over the relative power of the federal government and the states. Some white Southerners espoused what they termed a states' rights philosophy, in which the separate states could nullify federal laws with which they strongly disagreed, and could even secede from the Union if necessary in order to preserve their state's autonomy. The results of the Civil War seemed to make the federal government clearly superior to the states, and to diminish the powers of the states.

But the theory of states' rights remained powerful, especially for many white Southerners. The federal government attempted to enforce black Americans' civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s. After the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) declared racial segregation to be unconstitutional, many Southern states, legislators, and white citizens openly defied federal authority. The idea of states' rights, which predated the Civil War, now returned to the forefront of American politics. Resistance to the civil rights movement would last for another decade, until the federal government intervened decisively on behalf of black Americans by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Because they looked to the federal government to defend their rights against laws passed by the Southern states, African Americans have generally seen the federal government as a potential protector, and have been less likely to share some white Americans' distrust of a too-powerful central government. For most black Americans, states' rights has always been synonymous with resistance to racial equality.