Johnson vetoed the act in part because the citizenship provision would immediately make citizens of native-born Black people while European-born immigrants had to wait several years to qualify for citizenship via naturalization (which was then open only to white people). In 1875, Congress enacted legislation that prohibited racial discrimination in the provision of public accommodations. Segregationist Southerners were not the only ones who railed against anti-discrimination laws on the grounds that they constituted illegitimate preferences for African Americans. In 1945, the New York City administrator Robert Moses inveighed against pioneering municipal anti-discrimination legislation in employment and college admissions. Displaying more anger at the distant prospect of racial quotas than the immediate reality of racial exclusions, Moses maintained that anti-discrimination measures would “mean the end of honest competition, and the death knell of selection and advancement on the basis of talent.”

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Persons: Johnson, ” Johnson, disapprovingly, Franklin D, Roosevelt, Jamie Whitten, Robert Moses inveighed, Moses, ” Organizations: Civil, Employment, Commission, New Locations: Mississippi, New York City