ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how the Civil War and its aftermath raised new issues of diversity, equality, and civil rights in America. It looks at the stout resistance that white men put up even after the Civil War to claims by minorities and women for equal rights. The chapter explores the modern struggle for minority and gender equality. It follows the debate over whether attempts to redress historical disadvantages of minorities and women through “affirmative action” must inevitably involve “reverse discrimination” against white men. In 1817 the American Colonization Society was founded to promote the transportation of emancipated slaves to Liberia, the society’s colony on the west coast of Africa. The civil rights agenda of the 1950s and 1960s demanded equality of opportunity and nondiscrimination. These ideas were embedded as promises and guarantees in the civil rights and voting rights acts of the mid-1960s.
