In civil rights and American democracy, Congress’s role looms large

As state legislatures threaten American democracy with gerrymandering, voter suppression and election subversion, congressional inaction threatens to reprise its past institutional failures. Each moment of backsliding on multi-racial democracy has been led not by Congress, but by state governments, enabled by the president and Supreme Court. Although Congress hasn’t led the way in democratic backsliding, it has been guilty of inaction, often as a result of filibusters. Today, American democracy once again faces this very risk of congressional inaction.

Many are worried that Congress isn’t up to the task of protecting multiracial democracy in America. The public is sour on Congress, with polls even finding Congress less popular than head lice. In historical narratives, Congress is seldom cast in a positive light, particularly when we are considering moments of progress on racial justice. Instead, it has been the president and the courts that have received the lion’s share of credit for changes in government policy, with accounts occasionally, but not often enough, making clear the central role of movement activists in pressuring these actors. Even so, each moment of successful policy action for democracy has required affirmative, positive action by Congress.

Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and President Lyndon Johnson’s push for the Civil Rights Act, alongside the dramatic push from movement activists, are generally credited with ending Jim Crow, just as Lincoln’s leadership in the Civil War and in the push for the 14th Amendment is highlighted. Although the president and courts played a significant role, each of these cases actually depended critically on congressional legislation to succeed.

And when it comes to periods of democratic backsliding and reversals, it has been the president, courts, or both, that took the lead in allowing state and local actors to undermine democratic equality, especially the civil rights of Black Americans. President Andrew Johnson rolled back the first wave of efforts to help formerly enslaved people in the South in 1865-66, only to be turned back (temporarily) by a Congress led by Radical Republicans. Decades later, as Jim Crow was expanding through Southern states, President Taft proclaimed that “it is not the disposition or within the province of the Federal Government to interfere with the regulation by Southern States of their domestic affairs.” His successor, President Woodrow Wilson resegregated the federal government with devastating consequences. More recent presidents, including Presidents Reagan, W. Bush and Trump, each nominated Supreme Court justices who reduced national enforcement of voting and civil rights. 

The Supreme Court is revered for its civil rights rulings in the 1950s and 60s. But this Warren Court period was an anomaly; the judicial branch has, more often, represented a “hollow hope” for the cause of multiracial democracy. Beyond the infamous Dredd Scott ruling (1857), the Court undermined Reconstruction in the 1870s and 80s, forestalling the use of the 14th and 15th amendments to protect Black voting rights, and overruling the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Its…