The federal law, signed 2 July 1964, that outlawed segregation in public accommodations and banned employment discrimination.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the movement’s greatest legislative victory to that date, and it was won in the streets before it was won in Congress. The nonviolent campaigns of 1963 — above all the demonstrations in Birmingham and the March on Washington organized by A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin — pressed President John F. Kennedy to propose a civil rights bill in June 1963. After Kennedy’s assassination, President Lyndon B. Johnson made its passage his top priority. The House passed a strengthened bill, H.R. 7152, on 10 February 1964 by a vote of 290 to 130.
In the Senate, Majority Leader Mike Mansfield kept the bill away from the Judiciary Committee chaired by Mississippi segregationist James Eastland, and Southern Democrats answered with a filibuster that stretched from March into June. Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota managed the bill, and Minority Leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois delivered the Republican votes needed to end debate. On 10 June 1964 the Senate voted 71 to 29 for cloture — the first time it had ever cut off a filibuster on a civil rights bill — and on 19 June it passed the act 73 to 27. The House accepted the Senate version, and Johnson signed it in the East Room of the White House on 2 July 1964.
The act outlawed segregation in hotels, restaurants, theaters, and other public accommodations; barred discrimination in public facilities and in federally funded programs; and strengthened federal power to desegregate schools under Brown v. Board of Education. Title VII prohibited employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin and created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The word “sex” was added on the House floor by Representative Howard W. Smith of Virginia, a segregationist whose motives are still debated. Its voting provisions were weak, a gap the Voting Rights Act of 1965 would address.
See also: Voting Rights Act of 1965, Brown v. Board of Education, Jim Crow, Sit-In, Freedom Rides, Freedom Summer
Sources
- National Archives and Records Administration, “Civil Rights Act (1964),” Milestone Documents. Link
- United States Senate, “Landmark Legislation: The Civil Rights Act of 1964.” Link
- Library of Congress, “The Civil Rights Act of 1964,” The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom. Link
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