US Civil Rights Act
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex, or national origin in public accommodations, employment, and federally assisted programmes. Title II ended the legal basis for segregated lunch counters, hotels, and theatres. Title VII created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate workplace discrimination complaints. The sex discrimination prohibition was added to Title VII by a Southern Democrat (Howard Smith) who intended it to make the bill unpassable — it survived and became the legal basis for subsequent sex discrimination and later gender identity case law. The Act was the legislative culmination of a decade of organised civil rights pressure and the political opportunity created by Kennedy's assassination. Lyndon Johnson's mastery of the Senate — including the 60-vote cloture vote that ended the longest filibuster in Senate history (60 working days) — was essential to passage. Enforcement mechanisms were weaker than its ambitions: the EEOC had no litigation authority until 1972. The Act's structural limitation was that it addressed legal discrimination but not the economic inequality built into residential segregation, school financing, and inherited wealth — gaps that produced the Great Society programmes and, later, the affirmative action debate.
- Year: 1964 CE
- Category: Political
