The Civil Rights Act of 1964

Signed by President Johnson in July 1964, the Civil Rights Act outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in employment, public accommodations, and federally funded programs. It was the most consequential civil rights statute since Reconstruction.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the product of a decade of pressure. The Brown v. Board decision of 1954 had declared school segregation unconstitutional. Sit-ins, freedom rides, and the March on Washington in 1963 had built public support for federal action. President Kennedy proposed comprehensive civil rights legislation in June 1963. After his assassination, President Johnson made passage a priority and used both moral suasion and legislative skill to push it through. The bill survived the longest filibuster in Senate history before cloture was invoked. Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois delivered the Republican votes that made cloture possible. The act is organized into eleven titles. Title II bans discrimination in public accommodations like hotels, restaurants, and theaters. Title VI bars discrimination in federally funded programs. Title VII, the most far-reaching, prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin and created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Other titles addressed schools, voting, and federal contracting. The Supreme Court upheld Title II in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, reasoning that Congress could ban discrimination in privately owned public accommodations under its Commerce Clause authority. The act transformed American workplaces, schools, and public spaces. It also pushed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 onto the next year's legislative agenda, after the brutality of Bloody Sunday in Selma made the case for federal protection of the franchise impossible to ignore.