Civil Rights Act of 1964: The Law That Outlawed Segregation

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a landmark United States federal law that outlawed racial segregation in public accommodations and banned discrimination in employment on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex or national origin. Proposed by President John F. Kennedy in June 1963 and signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson on 2 July 1964, it survived the longest filibuster in Senate history up to that time. It ended the legal basis of Jim Crow segregation in American public life and remains one of the most important laws in the country’s history.

Background: Jim Crow and the movement

After the end of Reconstruction in the 1870s, Southern states built a system of laws and customs known as Jim Crow. It segregated schools, transport, restaurants, hotels, parks and hospitals, and largely excluded Black citizens from voting. In 1896 the Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson accepted “separate but equal” facilities.

The Supreme Court began to dismantle this system with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which declared segregated public schools unconstitutional. But court rulings were slow to change daily life, and Congress had passed only weak civil rights laws, in 1957 and 1960, which focused on voting.

The civil rights movement kept up pressure through boycotts, sit-ins, Freedom Rides and marches. The turning point came in spring 1963, when the Birmingham campaign in Alabama produced national television images of police dogs and fire hoses used against Black children.

Kennedy’s bill

On 11 June 1963, after Governor George Wallace had tried to block two Black students from enrolling at the University of Alabama, Kennedy gave a televised address calling civil rights a moral issue “as old as the scriptures”. A week later he sent Congress a bill to outlaw segregation in public accommodations and to strengthen federal action on schools and voting.

The bill faced powerful opposition from Southern Democrats, who controlled key committees in both houses. The March on Washington on 28 August 1963, attended by about 250,000 people, showed broad public support. In the House of Representatives, the Judiciary Committee chairman, Emanuel Celler of New York, and its senior Republican, William McCulloch of Ohio, worked out a stronger bipartisan version, which added a section on employment discrimination.

Johnson takes up the cause

Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on 22 November 1963. Five days later, addressing a joint session of Congress, the new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, said that no memorial could honour Kennedy more eloquently than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill.

Johnson, a Texan and former Senate majority leader, used his long experience of Congress to push the bill forward. In the House, the Rules Committee chairman, Howard W. Smith of Virginia, delayed it until supporters threatened a discharge petition to force it out of committee.

During the House debate, on 8 February 1964, Smith proposed adding “sex” to the list of protected categories in the employment section. His motives are still debated: he was a long-standing supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment but also an opponent of the bill. The amendment passed with the support of women members such as Martha Griffiths of Michigan. On 10 February 1964 the House passed the bill by 290 votes to 130.

The Senate filibuster

In the Senate, the majority leader, Mike Mansfield, arranged for the bill to bypass the Judiciary Committee, chaired by the segregationist James Eastland of Mississippi. Formal debate began on 30 March 1964. A group of Southern senators led by Richard Russell of Georgia launched a filibuster, an attempt to block a vote by prolonging debate indefinitely.

To end a filibuster the Senate needed a two-thirds majority of those voting, a vote known as cloture, and it had never succeeded on a civil rights bill. The floor manager, Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, organised supporters to keep enough senators present at all times, while religious groups, trade unions and civil rights organisations lobbied senators across the country.

The key figure was the Republican minority leader, Everett Dirksen of Illinois. After weeks of negotiation with Humphrey, the Justice Department and Johnson, he agreed a substitute bill with modest changes that brought most Republican senators on board. On 10 June 1964, after Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia had spoken against the bill for more than 14 hours, the Senate voted for cloture by 71 to 29. The filibuster had lasted 60 working days.

The Senate passed the bill on 19 June by 73 votes to 27. The House accepted the Senate version on 2 July, and Johnson signed it that evening in the East Room of the White House, in front of a televised audience and guests including Martin Luther King Jr. He used dozens of pens, handing them out as souvenirs.

What the act did

The act was divided into eleven sections called titles. The most important were:

• Title I set uniform standards for voter registration in federal elections, though it left literacy tests largely intact.
• Title II banned discrimination on grounds of race, colour, religion or national origin in hotels, motels, restaurants, cinemas, theatres, sports venues and petrol stations that served the public and affected interstate commerce.
• Title III required the desegregation of public facilities such as parks and libraries run by state and local governments.
• Title IV allowed the Attorney General to sue for the desegregation of public schools.
• Title VI barred discrimination in any programme receiving federal funds, giving the government a powerful financial weapon.
• Title VII outlawed employment discrimination by employers, unions and employment agencies on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex or national origin, and created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

Consequences

Change in public places came quickly in many areas. Some businesses challenged the law, but on 14 December 1964 the Supreme Court unanimously upheld Title II in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States and Katzenbach v. McClung, a case about a Birmingham barbecue restaurant.

Title VI proved especially effective. The threat of losing federal money, combined with new federal school aid from 1965 and the start of Medicare in 1966, pushed Southern school districts and hospitals to desegregate. Within a few years, Southern schools went from almost total segregation to being among the most integrated in the country.

Title VII reshaped American workplaces. In Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971), the Supreme Court ruled that employment practices with a discriminatory effect could be unlawful even without proven intent. The sex provision became the basis of many later women’s rights cases, and in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) the Court held that it also protects gay and transgender employees.

Politically, the act contributed to a realignment. Most Republicans in Congress voted for it, but the Republican presidential candidate in 1964, Senator Barry Goldwater, voted against, and he carried five Deep South states that November. Over the following decades many white Southern voters moved from the Democratic to the Republican Party.

The act did not end discrimination in voting. Violence against voting rights campaigners, such as during Freedom Summer in Mississippi and the Selma marches of 1965, led to the Voting Rights Act of August 1965.

Myths and facts

Myth: the act was passed by one party against the other. The division was more regional than partisan. Northern Democrats and most Republicans supported the bill, while almost all Southern Democrats opposed it. In the final Senate vote, Democrats voted 46 to 21 in favour and Republicans 27 to 6; a higher proportion of Republicans than Democrats supported it in both houses.

Myth: the act ended discrimination overnight. Many businesses, school districts and employers resisted or evaded it for years, and enforcement depended on lawsuits, federal funding decisions and continued protest. Title VII came into force only on 2 July 1965, a year after signing, and the new EEOC initially had limited powers to enforce it.

Myth: Johnson said he had “lost the South for a generation”. The remark is often attributed to Johnson on the night he signed the act, based on later recollections by his aide Bill Moyers, but it was not recorded at the time and its exact wording is uncertain. Its prediction, however, broadly matched the political changes that followed.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1954, 17 May: Brown v. Board of Education rules school segregation unconstitutional.
• 1963, 11 June: Kennedy announces a civil rights bill in a televised address.
• 1963, 28 August: The March on Washington shows mass support for the bill.
• 1963, 22 November: Kennedy is assassinated; Johnson becomes president.
• 1964, 10 February: The House passes the bill.
• 1964, 30 March: Senate debate and the Southern filibuster begin.
• 1964, 10 June: The Senate votes for cloture, ending the filibuster.
• 1964, 2 July: Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act.
• 1964, 14 December: The Supreme Court upholds Title II.

Why it matters

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended the legal foundation of segregation in American public life and created lasting federal protections against discrimination at work and in public institutions. It showed that a determined protest movement and a bipartisan coalition in Congress could overcome entrenched opposition, and its provisions continue to shape American law and society.