Civil Rights Movement In The 1980's

The 1960’s to the 1980’s was a time for change in the United States. During these two decades, groups in America fought for, and achieved, changes in federal and state policy. During this period, the Civil Rights movement, made up of organizations stretching from the NAACP to the SCLC, worked to achieve equality under the law for all citizens, regardless of skin color. Advocacy groups for gun-rights, like the N.R.A., gained strength during this period and helped drive change in federal law concerning gun ownership and regulation. Inmates and progressive legislators made strides to reform and improve the prison system in the United States and defend the constitutional rights of those incarcerated. Beginning in the early twentieth century,

S.’s policy concerning the ownership and regulation began to change. Prior the 1960’s, the Second Amendment was not widely thought to guarantee the individual right to own a firearm, early gun policy from this period reflects this thought. Following Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassination of President Kennedy, with a rifle he bought from a mail – order catalog, Americans sought reform of the nation’s gun policy (Lepore, 2012). Shortly after the assassination, Congress began considering legislation that would restrict the mail – order of shotguns and rifles and would pass the Gun Control Act in 1968 (Lepore, 2012). The 1968 act prohibited mail – order sales and limited the ability of people with criminal records to buy a firearm. The act, viewed positively by most Americans in 1968, had the support of the National Rifle Association (N.R.A). However, beginning in the late 1960’s and 1970’s, American’s views on the Second Amendment began to evolve. Stemming from the various “rights” movements of the 1960’s, the perceived constitutional right to own a firearm started taking a hold of American society (Lepore, 2012). By the early 1970’s, groups like the N.R.A. started promoting a new interpretation of the Second Amendment, that the amendment guaranteed the right to carry a firearm (Lepore, 2012). By the mid 1970’s, the N.R.A. established a lobbying firm to fight against further legislation regulating firearm ownership. Through campaigns to raise

In 1964, the Supreme Court ruled in the case Cooper v. Pate that inmates had the power to sue in federal court if the conditions of their incarceration violated their constitutional rights (Perkinson, 2010, pp. 266 - 267). Prior to Cooper, one of the only forms of legal redress prisoners had was filing a writ of habeas corpus, a writ challenging the imprisonment of those unlawfully detained. Following Cooper, organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and NAACP helped inmates file civil rights litigation in federal courts, with over 3,000 such lawsuits filed in 1972 (Perkinson, 2010, p. 267). One of the largest cases to arise out of this litigation was Holt v. Sarver (1970) where the entire Arkansas state prison system faced trial for egregious violations of its inmates’ constitutional rights. The case concerned Arkansas’s Cummins farm where “convicts were crowded into fetid, perilous barracks … worked to exhaustion … under the watch of convict trusties, who … beat, raped, or even killed” (Perkinson, 2010, p. 267). This case, and other cases across the South, resulted in the complete restructuring of many states’ prison systems. The Texas Department of Corrections (TDC) at that time employed a type of trusty system where correction officials selected trusties, called building tenders, to watch over other inmates rather than hire