The Civil Rights Act: 60th Anniversary

Sixty years ago, US congressmen passed a new law to end discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex and national origin. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. It marked a new era of legislative equality. The landmark law continues to protect voter rights and prohibit racial segregation and employment discrimination. Its introduction, however, was the result of a long and difficult journey.

racial tension

After the American Civil War, the abolition of slavery did not create equality in the United States. The 14th Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1868, granting citizenship to formerly enslaved people. It also gave citizens equal protection under the law. However, over a century later, despite many additional acts, laws and executive orders, discrimination was still rife. There was massive resistance to desegregation in the southern states. There, the Jim Crow laws considered racial segregation as constitutional. When prominent civil rights activist Medgar Evers was murdered by a member of the white supremacist, segregationist organisation White Citizens’ Council, in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963, racial tension reached boiling point.

MORAL CRISIS

John F. Kennedy declared a moral crisis on national television and promised new legislation. In the second term of his presidency, he presented the most comprehensive civil rights bill ever written. He said: “The United States will not be fully free until all of its citizens are free.” The new Civil Rights Act was going through several drafts when tragedy struck: Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in November 1963.

FILIBUSTER

Vice-president Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in. He immediately made the bill a priority. Creating a bi-partisan coalition, he managed to overcome strong opposition from the South. This included the longest filibuster in US political history, which occupied the Senate for sixty working days. The bill passed by a vote of 73 to 27. It was then approved in the House of Representatives. Just over a year after Kennedy’s proposal, on 2 July 1964, the bill was signed into law. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. called it a “second emancipation.”

LEGAL EQUALITY

The Civil Rights Act also inspired further legislation, such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, to ensure unbiased voting practices, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, to prevent discrimination in the buying or renting of property. The fight against racism was far from over but, legally, at least, segregation had been defeated in the United States.