Civil Rights Act of 1964 Totally Explained

Everything about Civil Rights Act Of 1964 totally explained

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Long title:

An Act To enforce the constitutional right to vote, to confer jurisdiction upon the district courts of the United States to provide relief against discrimination in public accommodations, to authorize the Attorney General to institute suits to protect constitutional rights in public facilities and public education, to extend the Commission on Civil Rights, to prevent discrimination in federally assisted programs, to establish a Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity, and for other purposes.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ( July 2, 1964) was a landmark legislation in the United States that outlawed segregation in the U.S. schools and public places. First conceived to help African Americans, the bill was amended prior to passage to protect women in courts, and explicitly included white people for the first time. It also started the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
In order to circumvent limitations on the federal use of the Equal Protection Clause handed down by the Civil Rights Cases, the law was passed under the Commerce Clause. Once it was implemented, its effects were far reaching and had tremendous long-term impacts on the whole country. It prohibited discrimination in public facilities, in government, and in employment, invalidating the Jim Crow laws in the southern U.S. It became illegal to compel segregation of the races in schools, housing, or hiring. Powers given to enforce the bill were initially weak, but were supplemented during later years.

Origins

The bill had been introduced by President John F. Kennedy in his civil rights speech of June 11 1963, in which he asked for legislation "giving all Americans the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public—hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments," as well as "greater protection for the right to vote."
He then sent a bill to Congress on June 19. Emulating the Civil Rights Act of 1875, Kennedy's civil rights bill included provisions to ban discrimination in public accommodations, and to enable the U.S. Attorney General to join in lawsuits against state governments which operated segregated school systems, among other provisions. But it doesn't include a number of provisions deemed essential by civil rights leaders including protection against police brutality, ending discrimination in private employment, or granting the Justice Department power to initiate desegregation or job discrimination lawsuites.

Passage

Passage in the House of Representatives

The bill was sent to the House of Representatives, and referred to the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Emmanuel Celler. After a series of hearings on the bill, Celler's committee greatly strengthened the act, adding provisions to ban racial discrimination in employment. The bill was reported out of the Judiciary Committee in November 1963, but was then referred to the Rules Committee, whose chairman, Howard W. Smith, a Democrat from Virginia, indicated his intention to keep the bill bottled up indefinitely.
   It was at this point that President Kennedy was assassinated. The new president, Lyndon Johnson, utilized his experience in parliamentary politics and the bully pulpit he wielded as president in support of the bill.
   Because of Smith's stalling of the bill in the Rules Committee, Celler filed a petition to discharge the bill from the Committee. Only if a majority of members signed the discharge petition, the bill would move directly to the House floor without consideration by advocates. Initially Johnson had a difficult time acquiring the signatures necessary, as even many congressmen who supported the civil rights bill itself were cautious about violating House procedure with the discharge petition. By the time of the 1963 winter recess, fifty signatures were still wanting.
   On the return from the winter recess, however, matters took a significant turn. The President's public advocacy of the Act had made a difference of opinion in congressmen's home districts, and soon it became apparent that the petition would acquire the necessary signatures. To prevent the humiliation of the success of the petition, Chairman Smith allowed the bill to pass through the Rules Committee.
   The bill was brought to a vote in the House on February 10, 1964, and passed by a vote of 290 to 130, and sent to the Senate.

Passage in the Senate

Johnson, who wanted the bill passed as soon as possible, ensured that the bill would be quickly considered by the Senate. Normally, the bill would have been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Senator James O. Eastland, from Mississippi. Under Eastland's care, it seemed impossible that the bill would reach the Senate floor. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield took a novel approach to prevent the bill from being relegated to Judiciary Committee limbo. Having initially waived a second reading of the bill, which would have led to it being immediately referred to Judiciary, Mansfield gave the bill a second reading on February 26, 1964, and then proposed, in the absence of precedent for instances when a second reading didn't immediately follow the first, that the bill bypass the Judiciary Committee and immediately be sent to the Senate floor for debate. Although this parliamentary move led to a brief filibuster, the senators eventually let it pass, preferring to concentrate their resistance on passage of the bill itself.
   The bill came before the full Senate for debate on March 30, 1964 and the "Southern Bloc" of southern Senators led by Richard Russell (D-GA) launched a filibuster to prevent its passage. Said Russell "We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our (Southern) states."
   After 54 days of filibuster, Senators Everett Dirksen (R-IL), Thomas Kuchel (R-CA), Hubert Humphrey (D-MN), and Mike Mansfield (D-MT) introduced a substitute bill that they hoped would attract enough Republican votes to end the filibuster. The compromise bill was weaker than the House version in regards to government power to regulate the conduct of private business, but it wasn't so weak as to cause the House to reconsider the legislation.
   On the morning of June 10, 1964, Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) completed an address that he'd begun 14 hours and 13 minutes earlier opposing the legislation. Until then, the measure had occupied the Senate for 57 working days, including six Saturdays. A day earlier, Democratic Whip Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, the bill's manager, concluded he'd the 67 votes required at that time to end the debate and end the filibuster. With six wavering senators providing a four-vote victory margin, the final tally stood at 71 to 29. Never in history had the Senate been able to muster enough votes to cut off a filibuster on a civil rights bill. And only once in the 37 years since 1927 had it agreed to cloture for any measure.
   Shortly thereafter, the substitute (compromise) bill passed the Senate by a vote of 73-27, and quickly passed through the House-Senate conference committee, which adopted the Senate version of the bill. The conference bill was passed by both houses of Congress, and was signed into law by President Johnson on July 2, 1964. Legend has it that as he put down his pen Johnson told an aide, "We have lost the South for a generation."

Vote totals

Totals are in "Yea-Nay" format:

The original House version: 290-130 (69%-31%)
The Senate version: 73-27 (73%-27%)
The Senate version, as voted on by the House: 289-126 (70%-30%)

By party

The original House version:

Democratic Party: 152-96 (61%-39%)

Republican Party: 138-34 (80%-20%) The Senate version: Representative Carl Elliott of Alabama later claimed, "Smith didn't give a damn about women's rights...he was trying to knock off votes either then or down the line because there was always a hard core of men who didn't favor women's rights," and the Congressional Record records that Smith was greeted by laughter when he introduced the amendment.
Smith nevertheless claimed that he sincerely supported the amendment and made serious arguments in its favor. Senator Richard Russell, Jr. warned President Johnson that his strong support for the civil rights bill "will not only cost you the South, it'll cost you the election." The South indeed started to vote increasingly Republican after 1964. However, political scientists Richard Johnston and Byron Schafer have argued that this development was based more on economics than on race. Although majorities in both parties voted for the bill, there were notable exceptions. Republican senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona voted against the bill, remarking, "You can't legislate morality." Goldwater had supported previous attempts to pass Civil Rights legislation in 1957 and 1960. The reason for his opposition to the 1964 bill was Title II, which he viewed as a violation of individual liberty. Most Democrats from the Southern states opposed the bill, including Senators Albert Gore Sr. (D-TN), J. William Fulbright (D-AR), and Robert Byrd (D-WV). Goldwater went on to secure his party's nomination for the presidency, and in the ensuing election, Goldwater won only Arizona and five of the Deep South states, two of which (Alabama and Mississippi) hadn't voted Republican since the disputed presidential election of 1876.

Major features of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

(The full text of the Act is available online

Title I

Barred unequal application of voter registration requirements, but didn't abolish literacy tests sometimes used to disqualify African Americans and poor white voters. � "It shall be the duty of the judge designated pursuant to this section to assign the case for hearing at the earliest practicable date and to cause the case to be in every way expedited."'

But it didn't eliminate literacy tests, which were one of the main methods used to exclude Black voters in the South, nor did it address economic retaliation, police repression, or physical violence against nonwhite voters. While the Act did require that voting rules and procedures be applied equally to all races, it failed to challenge the fundamental concept of voter "qualification." That is, it accepted the idea that citizens don't have an automatic right to vote but rather might have to meet some standard beyond citizenship.

Title II

Outlawed discrimination in hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and all other public accommodations engaged in interstate commerce; exempted private clubs without defining the term "private."

Title III

Prohibited state and municipal governments from denying access to public facilities on grounds of race, religion, or ethnicity.

Title IV

Encouraged the desegregation of public schools and authorized the U.S. Attorney General to file suits to enforce said act.

Title VI

Prevented discrimination by government agencies that receive federal funding. If an agency is found in violation of Title VI, that agency can lose its federal funding.

Title VII

Title VII of the Act, codified as Subchapter VI of Chapter 21 of [2] et seq., prohibits discrimination by covered employers on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin (see ). Same sex harassment is prohibited by Title VII (Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc.,, 118 S.Ct. 998).
   Title VII also prohibits discrimination against an individual because of his or her association with another individual of a particular race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. An employer can't discriminate against a person because of his interracial association with another, such as by an interracial marriage (Parr v. Woodmen of the World Life Insurance Company, 791 F.2d 888 (11th Cir. 1986)).
   Notwithstanding the general prohibition of employment discrimination, covered employers are allowed to discriminate on the basis of religion, sex or national origin (but not based on color or race) where religion, sex, or national origin is a bona fide occupational qualification reasonably necessary to the normal operation of that particular business or enterprise. In order to prove the Bona Fide Occupational Qualifications defense, an employer must prove three elements: a direct relationship between sex and the ability to perform the duties of the job, the BFOQ relates to the "essence" or "central mission of the employer's business," and there's no less-restrictive or reasonable alternative (Automobile Workers v. Johnson Controls, Inc., 111 S.Ct. 1196). The Bona Fide Occupational Qualification exception is an extremely narrow exception to the general prohibition of discrimination based on sex (Dothard v. Rawlinson, 97 S.Ct. 2720). An employer or customer's preference for an individual of a particular religion isn't sufficient to establish a Bona Fide Occupational Qualification (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Kamehameha School - Bishop Estate, 990 F.2d 458 (9th Cir. 1993)).
   Title VII allows for any employer, labor organization, joint labor-management committee, or employment agency to bypass the "unlawful employment practice" for any person involved with the Communist Party of the United States or of any other organization required to register as a Communist-action or Communist-front organization by final order of the Subversive Activities Control Board pursuant to the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950.
   There are partial and whole exceptions to Title VII for four types of employers:

Federal government; (Comment: The proscriptions against employment discrimination under Title VII are now applicable to the federal government under 42 U.S.C. Section 2000e-16

)

Indian Tribes

Religious groups performing work connected to the group's activities, including associated education institutions;

Bona fide nonprofit private membership organizations. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) as well as certain state fair employment practices agencies (FEPAs) enforce Title VII (see ). The EEOC and state FEPAs investigate, mediate, and may file lawsuits on behalf of employees. Every state, except Arkansas and Alabama maintains a state FEPA (see EEOC and state FEPA directory

). Title VII also provides that an individual can bring a private lawsuit. An individual must file a complaint of discrimination with the EEOC within 180 days of learning of the discrimination or the individual may lose the right to file a lawsuit. Title VII only applies to employers who employ 15 or more employees for more than 19 weeks in the current or preceding calendar year.
In the late 1970s courts began holding that sexual harassment is also prohibited under the Act. Chrapliwy v. Uniroyal is a notable Title VII case relating to sexual harassment that was decided in favor of the plaintiffs. In 1986 the Supreme Court held in Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson,, that sexual harassment is sex discrimination and is prohibited by Title VII. Title VII has been supplemented with legislation prohibiting pregnancy, age, and disability discrimination (See Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, Age Discrimination in Employment Act, Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990).

Title VIII

Required compilation of voter-registration and voting data in geographic areas specified by the Commission on Civil Rights.

Title IX

Made it easier to move civil rights cases from state courts with segregationist judges and all-white juries to federal court. This was of crucial importanct to civil rights activists who couldn't get a fair trial in state courts.

Title X

Established the Community Relations Service, tasked with assisting in community disputes involving claims of discrimination to people of color.

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