“It is an important gain, but I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come,” Johnson, a Democrat, purportedly told an aide later that day in a prediction that would largely come true.ĭid you know? President Lyndon B. Having broken the filibuster, the Senate voted 73-27 in favor of the bill, and Johnson signed it into law on July 2, 1964. Lyndon Johnson Signs The Civil Rights Act of 1964 One of those votes came from California Senator Clair Engle, who, though too sick to speak, signaled “aye” by pointing to his own eye. On one occasion, Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, a former Ku Klux Klan member, spoke for over 14 consecutive hours.īut with the help of behind-the-scenes horse-trading, the bill’s supporters eventually obtained the two-thirds votes necessary to end debate. Senate, where southern and border state Democrats staged a 75-day filibuster-among the longest in U.S.
In the end, the House approved the bill with bipartisan support by a vote of 290-130. That one passed, whereas over 100 other hostile amendments were defeated. In a mischievous attempt to sabotage the bill, a Virginia segregationist introduced an amendment to ban employment discrimination against women. House of Representatives, southerners argued, among other things, that the bill unconstitutionally usurped individual liberties and states’ rights. “Let this session of Congress be known as the session which did more for civil rights than the last hundred sessions combined,” Johnson said in his first State of the Union address. Kennedy was assassinated that November in Dallas, after which new President Lyndon B.
#Malcolm hard decisions war free
In June 1963 he proposed by far the most comprehensive civil rights legislation to date, saying the United States “will not be fully free until all of its citizens are free.” Civil Rights Act Moves Through Congress But with protests springing up throughout the South-including one in Birmingham, Alabama, where police brutally suppressed nonviolent demonstrators with dogs, clubs and high-pressure fire hoses-Kennedy decided to act. Kennedy entered the White House in 1961, he initially delayed supporting new anti-discrimination measures. Both of these bills were strongly watered down to overcome southern resistance. Three years later, Congress provided for court-appointed referees to help Black people register to vote. Finally, in 1957, it established a civil rights section of the Justice Department, along with a Commission on Civil Rights to investigate discriminatory conditions. Congress did not pass a single civil rights act. They also enforced strict segregation through “ Jim Crow” laws and condoned violence from white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan.įor decades after Reconstruction, the U.S. Nonetheless, many states-particularly in the South-used poll taxes, literacy tests and other measures to keep their African American citizens essentially disenfranchised.
0 kommentar(er)
