The Law Information Institute (LII) explains:
"A civil right is an enforceable right or privilege, which if interfered with by another gives rise to an action for injury.
Discrimination occurs when the civil rights of an individual are denied or interfered with because of the individual's membership in a particular group or class. Various jurisdictions have enacted statutes to prevent discrimination based on a person's race, sex, religion, age, previous condition of servitude, physical limitation, national origin, and in some instances sexual orientation.
Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
People often confuse civil rights and civil liberties. Civil rights refer to legal provisions that stem from notions of equality. Civil rights are not in the Bill of Rights; they deal with legal protections. For example, the right to vote is a civil right. A civil liberty, on the other hand, refers to personal freedoms protected by the Bill of Rights. For example, the First Amendment's right to free speech is a civil liberty."
See https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/civil_rights
These are only a few examples.
A Different Mirror by
Lib Guides: "Describes the immigrant experiences of Japanese, African, Irish, and Jewish Americans, exposing the abuses suffered by Native Americans, slaves, and workers who built the country."
Brethren by Nature by
LibGuides description: "In Brethren by Nature, Margaret Ellen Newell reveals a little-known aspect of American history: English colonists in New England enslaved thousands of Indians. Massachusetts became the first English colony to legalize slavery in 1641, and the colonists' desire for slaves shaped the major New England Indian wars, including the Pequot War of 1637, King Philip's War of 1675-76, and the northeastern Wabanaki conflicts of 1676-1749. When the wartime conquest of Indians ceased, New Englanders turned to the courts to get control of their labor, or imported Indians from Florida and the Carolinas, or simply claimed free Indians as slaves. Drawing on letters, diaries, newspapers, and court records, Newell recovers the slaves' own stories and shows how they influenced New England society in crucial ways. Indians lived in English homes, raised English children, and manned colonial armies, farms, and fleets, exposing their captors to Native religion, foods, and technology. Some achieved freedom and power in this new colonial culture, but others experienced violence, surveillance, and family separations. Newell also explains how slavery linked the fate of Africans and Indians. The trade in Indian captives connected New England to Caribbean and Atlantic slave economies. Indians labored on sugar plantations in Jamaica, tended fields in the Azores, and rowed English naval galleys in Tangier. Indian slaves outnumbered Africans within New England before 1700, but the balance soon shifted. Fearful of the growing African population, local governments stripped Indian and African servants and slaves of legal rights and personal freedoms. Nevertheless, because Indians remained a significant part of the slave population, the New England colonies did not adopt all of the rigid racial laws typical of slave societies in Virginia and Barbados. Newell finds that second- and third-generation Indian slaves fought their enslavement and claimed citizenship in cases that had implications for all enslaved peoples in eighteenth-century America."
Julius Chambers by 
See also our list of databases.
Subscription databases require a card from the Connecticut State Library for remote access. Those with an open lock icon are freely available. Databases that must be used within the library are not listed here. See:
This HeinOnline database covers civil rights in the United States as their legal protections and definitions are expanded to cover more and more Americans. Containing publications from the Commission on Civil Rights, legislative histories on landmark legislation, briefs from relevant U.S. Supreme Court cases, and more.
Digitized images of over 1,100 American magazines and journals that began publication between 1740 and 1900. Remote access with a library card issued by the Connecticut State Library.
Provides access to thousands of papers concerning English activities in the American, Canadian, and West Indian colonies between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Also included is a digitized version of The Calendar of State Papers, Colonial: North America and the West Indies 1574-1739, which contains bibliographic records and extracts for thousands of additional documents.
The CGP is the finding tool for federal publications that includes descriptive records for historical and current publications and provides direct links to those that are available online. Users can search by authoring agency, title, subject, and general key word, or click on "Advanced Search" for more options.
Public policy issues from Congressional Research Service. Coverage: CRS reports, 1916 - ; Committee Prints, 1830 -. Updated continuously. National and international.
Comprehensive index and selected full-text source for Congressional publications. Coverage: 1819-
A HeinOnline digitized collection of the bound and daily versions of the Congressional Record, and its predecessors. Coverage: 1789-.
A HeinOnline collection that brings together books, biographies and periodicals dedicated to the role of women in society and the law for users to research the progression of women's roles and rights in society over the past 200 years. Also included are more than 70 titles from Emory University Law School's Feminism and Legal Theory Project which provide a platform to view the effect of law and culture on the female gender.
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