Civil Rights Act of 1964

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White House Publication of the Civil Rights Act 1964 (first page)
Last of the eight pages of the law signed by President Johnson
US President Lyndon B. Johnson (seated) with representatives from politics and society at the signing of the law in the East Room of the White House
Televised address by President Lyndon B. Johnson at the signing of the Civil Rights Act (July 2, 1964)

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a US civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, gender, or national origin. Crucially, the law empowered the Federal Department of Justice to enforce these ordinances, as states were reluctant to do so after the previous civil rights laws of 1957 and 1960 were passed.

It is considered to be one of the most significant legal equality laws in the United States for African Americans. The law made the unequal application of the right to vote as illegal as racial segregation in public facilities such as restaurants, cinemas, hotels, sports stadiums, buses, sanitary facilities, etc. Discriminatory illiteracy tests and other discrimination against minorities were included in the Voting Rights Act the following year of 1965 banned.

The bill had been proposed by President John F. Kennedy in June 1963 , but Southern segregationists were prevented from being passed in the Senate. After Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson urged the United States Congress to approve the law. The House of Representatives passed the law on February 10, 1964, and after a 54-day filibuster , the Senate passed it on June 19, 1964; it was signed by President Johnson in the White House on July 2, 1964.

prehistory

By the 1960 presidential election campaign , de facto racial segregation in the northern states and de jure racial segregation in the southern states of the United States had become so popular that no party could ignore them. Racial segregation was only completely abolished in the American armed forces , which the then US President Harry S. Truman had ordered in July 1948 by means of a presidential decree ( Executive Order 9981 ). 1954 declared Supreme Court in the decision v Brown. Board of Education racial segregation in schools for illegal.

Therefore, both the Democratic and Republican parties have declared their intention to end racial discrimination and prejudice. The Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy was most clearly on the side of the blacks, among other things through the liberation of Martin Luther King from the prison in Atlanta , Georgia , when he was incarcerated for a sit-in there - and the votes the blacks played a decisive role in Kennedy's narrow election victory.

After his victory, Kennedy showed his appreciation and filled a number of prominent positions with blacks. However, these measures were insufficient to counter the increasingly militant protests by blacks, who still did not see their demands for equality between black and white realized. However, in his first two years in office, Kennedy had not been particularly active on the black issue. This only changed when there were more and more uprisings in the civil rights movement in 1963 . When, in May 1963, George Wallace , the governor of Alabama , refused admission to black students at the University of Tuscaloosa , Alabama, Kennedy took this as an opportunity to address the American people with a televised address on June 11, 1963 and behind to face the fight for equality. That same month, he submitted a comprehensive civil rights law to Congress . Kennedy's efforts to get the bill failed to win majorities in Congress.

Adoption of the law

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 . Lyndon B. Johnson , the previous Vice President, took office on the same day . At this time, the enforcement of the Civil Rights Act seemed questionable because conservative politicians of both parties from the southern states , trying to prevent that clung to segregation adoption. Johnson, who was more experienced in dealing with Congress than his predecessor, called on MPs and senators to pass the law swiftly three days after Kennedy's death in his address to the legislature . One of the most famous opponents was Senator Barry Goldwater from Arizona , who ran against Johnson in the November 1964 presidential election (and lost that election significantly). Goldwater took the view that the matter would not be the responsibility of the federal government, but should the states be left. The House of Representatives voted in February 1964 with a clear majority (290: 130) for the draft, then the bill went to the US Senate . Johnson urged a swift adoption and, together with the Democratic group leader in the Senate Mike Mansfield , achieved that it was immediately put on the agenda of the Senate and not first went to its legal committee. Conservative politicians from the southern states announced vehement opposition to the draft law and tried from March to prevent the chamber from voting on the draft by means of filibusters (long-term speeches). During the 57-day blockade, Johnson exerted strong pressure on the Senate in both public and non-public speeches. At his insistence, on June 10, 1964, Democratic group leader Mike Mansfield, Democratic Senator Hubert H. Humphrey , Republican parliamentary group leader Everett Dirksen and Republican Senator Thomas Kuchel proposed a Senate vote to end filibuster. The latter agreed with 71 to 29 votes and thus achieved the two-thirds majority required to end the filibuster. With a minor change to the House wording, the Senate also passed the Civil Rights Act by 71 votes to 29. Since both chambers of congress have to approve laws in exactly the same wording, the version passed in the Senate came into the House of Representatives, which finally approved on July 2, 1964 at 289: 126.

President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964 in a grand public ceremony in the East Room of the White House hours after the House of Representatives approved it. For the signing, Johnson used more than 100 fountain pens , which he handed out to the guests present. Among these, the most famous African American civil rights activist was Martin Luther King . With Johnson's signature, the Civil Rights Act became formally legally binding.

The signing took place on the 125th anniversary of the successful slave revolt on the ship Amistad in 1839.

Aftermath

The Civil Rights Act significantly improved the situation of African Americans, but did not remove discrimination against black voters. At the initiative of President Johnson, Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield and Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen presented the Voting Rights Act to Congress on March 17 . The Senate passed it on May 26, and the House of Representatives on July 9, 1965; Johnson signed it on August 6, 1965. Here, too, Martin Luther King played a major role in convincing Congress of the necessity of the law in the course of peaceful protests.

Martin Luther King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for his efforts to bring about this law .

In addition to the 1964 Act, there were Civil Rights Acts before and after ( 1866 , 1871 , 1875 , 1957 , 1960 , 1968, and 1991 ).

The law also protects against gender discrimination in general. In 2020 the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Bostock v. Clayton County that gender includes gender identity and sexual orientation, and therefore no one may be fired on the basis of that alone.

See also

literature

  • Robert D. Loevy (Ed.): The Civil Rights Act of 1964: The Passage of the Law That Ended Racial. State University of New York, Albany 1997, ISBN 0-7914-3361-7 .
  • Bernard Grofman (Ed.): Legacies of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville 2000, ISBN 978-0-8139-1921-8 .

Web links

Commons : Civil Rights Act of 1964  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. About.com: Desegregation of the Armed Forces (information text in English)
  2. Interactive offer John F. Kennedy - President for 1000 days  in the ZDFmediathek , accessed on January 25, 2014. (offline)
  3. ^ Robert Dallek: Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President. Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-515921-7 , pp. 230 ff.
  4. Christof Mauch : The American Presidents CH Beck Munich ISBN 978-3-406-58742-9 p. 364 ff.
  5. ^ Adam Liptak : Civil Rights Law Protects Gay and Transgender Workers, Supreme Court Rules. In: The New York Times . June 16, 2020, accessed June 19, 2020 .
  6. Christian Zaschke: Unexpected support. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . June 16, 2020, accessed June 19, 2020 .