The Civil Rights Act 1964 prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. When it was promulgated by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 2, 1964, it was a major victory for the civil rights movement in its battle against the unjust laws of Jim Crow that marginalized black Americans. It took years of activism, courage and leadership from civil rights icons from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Little Rock Nine to bring the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to fruition. These are eight key steps that ultimately led to the adoption of the law.
1. Brown v. school council
Children involved in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education civil rights lawsuit, which challenged the legality of segregation in U.S. public schools: Vicki Henderson, Donald Henderson, Linda Brown, James Emanuel, Nancy Todd, and Katherine Carper.
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The 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education said the segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional, setting a critical precedent that “separate but equal” schools were not equal in the eyes of the law. “It provided a constitutional framework from which civil rights law could develop,” says Charles McKinney, director of African studies and associate professor of history at Rhodes College. In practice, however, segregation was far from over: “The South was building barriers and the federal government was ambivalent about law enforcement,” McKinney says.
READ MORE: 10 things you should know about Brown c. Board of Education
2. The Montgomery Bus Boycott
Rosa Parks sits in the front of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, after the Supreme Court ruled illegal segregation on the city’s bus system on December 21, 1956.
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“The history of civil rights law is not the history of how a bill became law, but the history of the power of large-scale activism to change public opinion. public, ”says Clay Risen, journalist at New York Times and author of Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for Civil Rights Law.
The Montgomery bus boycott lasted for over a year, from December 5, 1955 to December 20, 1956. It was sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks, a black woman who refused to give up her seat on a public bus in a white man. “To function, we needed the participation of everyone in the black community. It was not just a boycott, but the coordination of carpooling, daycare, meals. He showed white Americans that the civil rights movement was not limited to fringe activists, but had widespread and sustained community support, ”Risen says. The boycott led the Supreme Court to order the desegregation of buses and put a new civil rights leader in the national spotlight: Martin Luther King, Jr.
READ MORE: 10 Things You Maybe Didn’t Know About Rosa Parks
3. Greensboro Sit-In
Protesters line the counter at FW Woolworth Co.
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The Greensboro Sit-In began at a Woolworth counter in Greensboro, NC, when young black men known as the “Greensboro Four” continued to occupy their seats after being refused service. . Their peaceful act of resistance quickly spread across the country: “All places that are separated become a fair game: students have readings in separate libraries, swim in separate pools, prayers in separate churches. . National companies suddenly have to explain why they are giving in to segregation in their chains in the South. This expands the scope of the theater where the action can take place, ”McKinney says.
READ MORE: How the Greensboro Four Sit-In sparked a movement
4. The Little Rock Nine
Elizabeth Eckford on her first day of school. She was one of nine students whose integration into Little Rock Central High School was ordered by a federal court following a lawsuit by the NAACP.
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The Little Rock Nine was a group of black students sent to attend Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in September 1957. Their enrollment was a 1954 test. Brown vs. School Board. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus called the Arkansas National Guard to prevent students from entering. It would take federal troops sent by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to safely escort the Little Rock Nine into the classroom. The governor’s military intervention and images of protesters spitting at students sparked national outrage that increased public support for civil rights.
READ MORE: Why Eisenhower Sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock after Brown v.
5. Freedom Riders
Freedom riders on a Greyhound bus sit on the ground in front of the bus after it was set on fire by a group of white protesters as they arrived in Anniston, Alabama.
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In 1961, Freedom Riders, a group of black and white protesters organized by the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), attempted to use white-only toilets, lunch counters and waiting rooms, testing the 1960 Supreme Court decision in Boynton v. Virginie who found the segregation of interstate transportation facilities unconstitutional.
“This is where you start to see more substantial involvement from the federal government. Sit-ins are a state affair, a city affair. The activists of 61 are explicit: the aim is to create constitutional confrontations to force the hand of the federal government, ”says McKinney. “The freedom riders are covered by federal law. They are not breaking a law, but they are arrested, harassed and beaten on national television while the federal government hesitates. It’s a moment that involves Washington and asks, “What are you going to do?” McKinney says.
READ MORE: Follow the Freedom Riders’ journey against segregation in the age of civil rights
6. The March on Washington
WATCH: The power of Martin Luther King, the ‘I have a dream’ speech
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom of August 28, 1963 saw 250,000 protesters rally outside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, following high-profile protests in Birmingham, Alabama and Jackson, Mississippi.
“What King did until 1963 was to create the context in which the bill could be passed,” Risen says. “The Birmingham protests have shown the power of non-violence by confronting the police and the white business community and in front of the cameras. King understood very well the need to show the brutality of the system to the whole world, ”Risen says. “People have seen children pushed into police vans, the horrors of dogs on protesters, Medgar Evers murdered in Jackson. This forced the locals to stop looking elsewhere.
President John F. Kennedy has tasked his brother, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, to coordinate with March on Washington organizers: Philip Randolph, founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and Bayard Rustin and King of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Famous artists like Joan Baez and Bob Dylan accompanied speakers like Walter Reuther, leader of the United Auto Workers and the main voice of the work; John Lewis and King himself, who delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech that day. “It was a show of moral force by a large number of people and a wide range of liberal leaders,” Risen says. “It marked the height of widespread public support for the bill when it needed it most, giving it momentum as it made its way through Congress.”
READ MORE: 7 Things You Maybe Didn’t Know About MLK’s ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech
7. Freedom Summer of 1964
Around 100 civil rights protesters kept vigil all night in front of the Democratic Congress Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey in an attempt to siege members of the Democratic Freedom Party on August 24, 1964. In the center of the image is Rita Schwerner, widow of Michael Schwerner who was killed near Philadelphia, Mississippi, earlier this summer.
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The Freedom Summer of 1964 was a campaign to register black voters across Mississippi who suffered harassment and intimidation at the polls. “The vote was absolutely essential for the passage of any legislation and for any politician who saw the needs of black southerners at the federal or local level,” says Judy Richardson, civil rights activist, educator, filmmaker (Eyes on the prize series) and staff member of the Nonviolent Student Coordinating Committee (SNCC). “You don’t get civil rights law without the Kennedy administration realizing that black southerners are a powerful source of votes.”
SNCC has partnered with CORE and the Local Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) to bring in over 400 white volunteers from the South. It was an unprecedented cooperation between young people and established activists: “SNCC was the only organization founded by young people within the national civil rights movement. When I joined SNCC, I was 19. We were seen as the vanguard, going to rural areas where it was dangerous to organize, where other civil rights organizations did not go.
The danger was real. The beatings, false arrests and the shocking murder of volunteers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan have drawn the country’s attention to the extreme obstacles black voters faced in registering to vote. The Summer of Freedom of 1964 paved the way for both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
LISTEN TO APPLE PODCASTS: Freedom Summer, 1964
8. The assassination of John F. Kennedy
In June 1963, President Kennedy introduced a civil rights bill and went on national television to say that the United States “will not be entirely free until all of its citizens are free.” When he was assassinated on November 22, 1963, his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, took up the cause. “It took the assassination of Kennedy and Johnson wrapping himself in Kennedy’s mantle, claiming it’s Kennedy’s legacy, to force the Civil Rights Act through the Senate,” McKinney says. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964, bringing King’s dream and the dreams of thousands of activists and allies closer to reality.
READ MORE: The JFK assassination: facts and investigation
