A/HRC/11/36/Add.3 page 5 Introduction 1. At the invitation of the Government, the Special Rapporteur visited the United States of America from 19 May to 6 June 2008 ((Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago, Omaha, Los Angeles, New Orleans and the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast, Miami and San Juan, Puerto Rico). He held extensive meetings with federal authorities at the executive, legislative and judicial branches as well as with local authorities (see appendix). 2. Apart from the agenda with state institutions, including the Supreme Court, the Special Rapporteur also had extensive meetings with civil society organizations active in the area of racism and xenophobia, minority communities as well as victims of racism and racial discrimination. 3. The Special Rapporteur wishes to express his gratitude to the Government of the United States for its full cooperation and openness throughout the visit as well as a particular appreciation to Justice Stephen Breyer at the Supreme Court. He also wishes to express his sincere thanks to all civil society organizations that actively participated and contributed to the success of his mission. In particular, he wishes to thank Global Rights for its support throughout the mission. I. GENERAL BACKGROUND A. Historical and political context 4. The first inhabitants of North America are believed to have arrived crossing from the Bering Strait towards the end of the last Ice Age. Before the advent of European explorers in the late 15th century, a population of one to two million people is believed to have populated North America. Epidemic diseases brought by the Europeans and violence obliterated many Native American peoples. 5. The United States of America became an independent State after the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). The three documents that emerged from independence – the Declaration of Independence (1776), the United States Constitution (1787) and the Bill of Rights (1791) – are among the first formal legally-binding documents recognizing inalienable individual rights such as freedom of religion, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. 6. The contradictions between the agrarian and slave-based South and the manufacturing, liberalizing and generally anti-slavery North exploded when the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, won the 1860 presidential election. By that time, 4 million slaves and 488,000 free blacks lived in the United States alongside 27 million whites. While the American Civil War (1861-1865) brought about the legal end of slavery and the adoption of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution, including the equal protection clause, differential treatment to blacks living in the South would continue well into the twentieth century. Jim Crow laws were enacted in many States, legitimated by the “separate but equal” doctrine legitimated by the Supreme Court in Plessy v Fergunson. 7. The “separate but equal” doctrine remained until the emergence of the civil rights movement in the mid-twentieth century. Though the starting point of the movement is difficult to