Slave Emancipation, Theatergoing, and the Revolutionizing of Human Rights

Join the Master of Liberal Arts (MLA) Program for an online discussion as we explore the efforts of former slaves and antislavery congressmen to secure guarantees of freedom that would include equal access to public accommodations in the immediate aftermath of Emancipation. Their efforts culminated in the Civil Right Act of 1875, which gave all persons a right to the equal enjoyment of inns and hotels, public conveyances such as railroads and steamships, and theaters and other places of public amusement.

Enacted by a Congress in which sat both ex-slaves and ex-Confederates, the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was meant to destroy the last vestiges chattel slavery and protection human rights. Although struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court as unconstitutional, its revolutionary principles were realized almost a century later under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.