I have chosen to respond to the question of “What does this story teach us about the relationship between civil liberties and civil rights?”, and the story is referring to “Subversive Southerner: Anne Braden and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Cold War South” by Catherine Fosl. First, I will define Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and next discuss the relationship between Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. “You couldn’t have civil rights without civil liberties” [Fosl 339].
Take for example the right to vote, you can think of it as a liberty – except for that, not everyone is free to vote at any given time. Ten year olds cannot vote. Therefore the right to vote is a civil rights issue because in States that don’t allow it – the majority of the voters are denying something to a minority – creating inequality in the ways that the laws work. To make things more confusing, often lawyers typically talk about ‘substantive’ and ‘procedural’ liberties but they usually call them ‘Rights’ instead of ‘Liberties’.
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For example, the First Amendment states that Congress shall make no law establishing ‘religion’. Meaning, they cannot create a national church or declare that Christianity, Islam, or Hinduism as the official religion of the United States of America. While procedural liberties are limits on how the government can act. For example, in America, in courtroom drama’s, there is a presumption that someone is innocent until proven guilty. This presumption means, in criminal cases, jury’s and judges have to act as those the accused is innocent until the prosecution conviences them otherwise. If they are not convienced, the accused person doesn’t go to prison. Now that we understand the difference between civil rights and civil liberties – lets focus next on liberties – what they are and where they come