What are civil rights? Civil rights are the rights to full legal, social, and economic equality. The Bill of Rights, 14th, 15th, 19th, and 26th amendments protect these rights.
The 14th Amendment granted citizenship to former African Americans recently freed from slavery, the 15th Amendment granted African American men the right to vote, the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote, and the 26th amendment lowered the voting age to 18. Several of these amendments helped put an end to segregation. There are two types of segregation, de jure segregation and de facto segregation. De facto segregation is segregation enforced by law.
De jure segregation is segregation by practice, rather than by law. Because de jure segregation is based on personal beliefs and opinions, it is much harder to end.