Concluding Thoughts

It would be comforting to view the U.S. Civil Rights movement as a triumph of the spirit of the U.S. Constitution. However, a look at the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa shows that this is a dramatic oversimplification of the issues involved. True, the Constitution triumphed, but only after one hundred and sixty odd years of nearly continuous failure. These failures occured because the people in power, either deliberately or simply because of sheer indifference, failed to uphold the principles upon which the Constitution had been written. The true triumph of the Constitution lies not the fact that its principles were finally upheld, but that the Constitution's own guidlines left those in power no other option but to adhere to those principles, be it willingly or not.

The lack of these guidlines in South Africa dramatically demonstrates their effect on America. In America, the Constitution ensured that politicians at least had to pay lip service to the idea that blacks were equal; the directors of South African policy were free to consider blacks their moral, societal, and intellectual inferiors. In America, the media were free to report any incident that occurred, and civil rights workers used this to great effect to gain widespread support for their cause; in contrast, the South African government regularly censored opinions or information it considered undesirable. The U.S. Constitution's free assembly clause prevented unsympathetic Southern officials from legally shutting down the civil rights movement; the South African goverment often banned entire organizations dedicated to achieving equality. Events such as these could never have been happened in the U.S.; indeed, one of the primary goals of the Constitution and Bill of Rights was to insure that these types of government action never occurred. (The massive trials of the anti-apartheid leaders for alleged treason were impossible in the U.S. thanks to the deliberately narrow definition of "treason" that the Founding Fathers provided.)

In the end, the U.S. Constitution functioned exactly as it was intended to---to establish the rights of citizens, with or without the approval of the government. The citizens knew that certain rules had to be followed, and the government knew this as well.