Civil Rights Act 1964

The Civil Rights Act of 1964
In the 1960 presidential election campaign John F. Kennedy argued for a new Civil Rights Act. Following the election it was discovered that over 70 per cent of the African American vote went to Kennedy. However, during the first two years of his presidency, Kennedy was unsuccessful in promoting his promised legislation.
The Civil Rights bill was brought before Congress in 1963 and in a speech on television on 11th June, Kennedy pointed out that: "The Negro baby born in America today, regardless of the section of the nation in which he is born, has about one-half as much chance of completing high school as a white baby born in the same place on the same day; one third as much chance of completing college; one third as much chance of becoming a professional man; twice as much chance of becoming unemployed; about one-seventh as much chance of earning $10,000 a year; a life expectancy which is seven years shorter; and the prospects of earning only half as much."
The Civil Rights Act was a highly controversial issue in the United States as soon as it was proposed by President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Although Kennedy was unable to secure passage of the bill in Congress, a stronger version was eventually passed with the urging of his successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson, who signed the bill into law on July 2, 1964, following one of the longest debates in Senate history. White groups opposed to integration with blacks responded to the act with a significant backlash that took the form of protests, increased support for pro-segregation candidates for public office, and some racial violence. The constitutionality of the act was immediately challenged and was upheld by the Supreme Court in the test case Heart of Atlanta Motel v. U.S. (1964). The act gave federal law enforcement agencies the power to prevent racial discrimination in employment, voting, and the use of public facilities.
In(1964), comprehensive U.S. legislation intended to end discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin; it is often called the most important U.S. law on civil rights since Reconstruction (1865–77). Title I of the act guarantees equal voting rights by removing registration requirements and procedures biased against minorities and the underprivileged. Title II prohibits segregation or discrimination in places of public accommodation involved in interstate commerce. Title VII bans discrimination by trade unions, schools, or employers involved in interstate commerce or doing business with the federal government. The latter section also applies to discrimination on the basis of sex and established a government agency, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), to enforce these provisions. The act also calls for the desegregation of public schools (Title IV), broadens the duties of the Civil Rights Commission (Title V), and assures nondiscrimination in the distribution of funds under federally assisted programs (Title VI).
As previously stated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in programs or activities receiving federal financial assistance. All federal agencies that provided grants of assistance are required to enforce the Title VI regulation.
The U.S. Department of Education gives grants of financial assistance to schools and colleges and to certain other entities, including vocational rehabilitation programs. The Title VI regulation describes the conduct that violates Title VI. Examples of discrimination covered by Title VI include racial harassment, school segregation, and denial of language services to national-origin-minority students who are limited in their English. The U.S. Department of Education Title VI regulation is enforced by the Department's Office for Civil Rights and is in the Code of Federal Regulations at 34 CFR 100.
Title VI
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination by organizations that receive federal funds. The impact of this provision was immediate and important. Most school districts in the Deep South and many elsewhere in the South had resisted efforts to desegregate in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954). Attempts to enforce the Court's desegregation rulings required detailed and expensive litigation in each district, and little actual desegregation occurred in the Deep South before 1964. Title VI made a significant difference when coupled with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, the nation's first major program of federal aid to local education programs. Proposals for federal aid to education had been obstructed previously when civil rights advocates, led by Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr., insisted that anyone who received federal funds would be barred from discriminating. These "Powell amendments" prompted southern representatives to vote against federal aid to education. The political forces that led to the adoption of Title VI also meant that southern opposition to federal aid to education could be overcome. The money available to southern school districts through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 broke the logjam over desegregation, and the number of school districts in which whites and African Americans attended the same schools rapidly increased.
The act banned discrimination in public facilities and prohibited employers from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin. . It allowed the federal government to cut off federal funds to projects or agencies if there was evidence that they discriminated on the basis of race, color, or national origin. It created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), as well as the Community Relations division of the Justice Department. A key provision of the act with respect to school desegregation empowered the Justice Department to bring suits against southern school districts that refused to implement the Brown decisions. So where the Brown rulings had limited impact, the Civil Rights Act came with the power of enforcement. For many southern school districts, the threat of federal lawsuits and losing federal money triggered the first signs of compliance with the Court's rulings in Brown.
This 1964 Civil Rights Act, the most important remedy for implementing Brown, granted the U.S. Attorney General the power and authority to bring suits on behalf of Black plaintiffs in thousands of school districts operating racially segregated public elementary and secondary schools. The 1964 Act also gave the U.S. secretary of Education the authority to collect data to document implementation of Brown and provide grants to school district to assist with school desegregation efforts. The data collection efforts provided data to plaintiffs in school desegregation cases with evidence of a lack of school desegregation in offending school districts.
The Civil Rights Act also attempted to deal with the problem of African Americans being denied the vote in the Deep South. The legislation stated that uniform standards must prevail for establishing the right to vote. Schooling to sixth grade constituted legal proof of literacy and the attorney general was given power to initiate legal action in any area where he found a pattern of resistance to the law.
In summary the 1964 Civil Rights Act:
· gave federal government the right to end segregation in the South
· prohibited segregation in public places. A public place was anywhere that received any form of federal (tax) funding (most places). This stopped lawyers homing in on the private places issue. This act tried to cover every aspect that some lawyer might use to avoid implementing this act.
· Equal Employment Commission was created
· federal funding would not be given to segregated schools (note that these had been banned in 1954, ten years previous!)
· any company that wanted federal business (the biggest spender of money in American business) had to have a pro-civil rights charter. Any segregationist company that applied for a federal contact would not get it.
Many historians now believe that the 1964 Act was of major importance to America’s political and social development. The act has been called Johnson’s greatest achievement. He constantly referred to the morality of what he was doing and made constant reference to the immorality of the social structure within America that tolerated any form of discrimination. Johnson’s desire, regardless of his background, was to advance America’s society and he saw the 1964 Civil Rights Act as the way forward.
Although the Civil Rights Act did not resolve all problems of discrimination, it did open the door to further progress by lessening racial restrictions on the use of public facilities, providing more job opportunities, strengthening voting laws, and limiting federal funding of discriminatory programs.
References:
Civil Rights Act. (2009). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved June 25, 2009, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/119351/Civil-Rights-Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/
http://www.america.gov/st/peopleplace-english/2008/December/20090106134535jmnamdeirf0.4566919.html
http://law.jrank.org/pages/11732/Civil-Rights-Act-1964.html