ARTICLE 3

Article 3 requires States Parties to condemn racial segregation and apartheid and to undertake to prevent, prohibit and eradicate "all practices of this nature" in territories under their jurisdiction.

State-sponsored segregation and de jure discrimination has been prohibited in the United States since the enactment of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments a few years after the end of the Civil War. However, the federal courts interpreted those provisions to permit state- sponsored and private racial discrimination (so-called "separate but equal" treatment of the races) through the first half of the Twentieth Century. This interpretation was authoritatively overruled by the Supreme Court in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed racial segregation in public schools and set the foundation for the elimination of segregation in all forms of public life. As discussed above, a series of Civil Rights Acts following that decision has extended the reach of this prohibition to many private relationships and activities. The United States emphatically condemns racial segregation and apartheid and prohibits any such practice in all territories under its jurisdiction.

Prior to the removal of the racist regimes in southern Africa, the United States condemned the policies and practices of those regimes and imposed economic and related sanctions in accordance with the decisions of the United Nations. Independent of the federal government's actions, many state and local governments as well as private institutions also acted to divest or otherwise dissociate themselves economically and politically from governments and institutions supporting or tolerating apartheid. Non-governmental groups supported economic boycotts and lobbied and pressured government at all levels to exert political and economic influence to end the racist policies in South Africa.