The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the most comprehensive civil rights legislation ever enacted by Congress. It contained extensive measures to dismantle Jim Crow segregation and combat racial discrimination.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 removed barriers to black enfranchisement in the South, banning poll taxes, literacy tests, and other measures that effectively prevented African Americans from voting.
Segregationists attempted to prevent the implementation of federal civil rights legislation at the local level.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964
After years of activist lobbying in favor of comprehensive civil rights legislation, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted in June 1964. Though President John F. Kennedy had sent the civil rights bill to Congress in 1963, before the March on Washington, the bill had stalled in the Judiciary Committee due to the dilatory tactics of Southern segregationist senators such as James Eastland, a Democrat from Mississippi.^1
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start superscript, 1, end superscript After the assassination of President Kennedy in November 1963, his successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, gave top priority to the passage of the bill.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 contained provisions barring discrimination and segregation in education, public facilities, jobs, and housing. It created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to ensure fair hiring practices, and established a federal Community Relations Service to assist local communities with civil rights issues. The bill also authorized the US Office of Education to distribute financial aid to communities struggling to desegregate public schools.^2
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After a coalition of religious groups, labor unions, and civil rights organizations mounted an intense grassroots effort to lobby support for the bill, the Senate finally passed it on June 11, by a vote of 73 to 27.
Popular resistance to civil rights legislation
The period following the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 witnessed resistance to the implementation of its measures. George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama, made a strong showing in the 1964 presidential primaries in Indiana, Maryland, and Wisconsin. His campaign relied heavily on anti-integration rhetoric and bemoaned the loss of “traditional” American values, prefiguring the rise of the new social conservatism.^3
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There was also some confusion about whether the provisions of the act applied to the private sector. Some public venues attempted to transform themselves into private clubs rather than desegregate and open their doors to African Americans. The Supreme Court declared such actions illegal, thereby upholding the constitutionality of the equal access provisions of the Civil Rights Act.^4
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Though the Civil Rights Act of 1964 included provisions to strengthen the voting rights of African Americans in the South, these measures were relatively weak and did not prevent states and election officials from practices that effectively continued to deny southern blacks the vote. Moreover, in their attempts to expand black voter registration, civil rights activists met with the fierce opposition and hostility of Southern white segregationists, many of whom were entrenched in positions of authority.
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