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Civil Rights Act of 1964

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on December 12, 2007 at 4:40:50 am
 
 
 Civil Rights Act of 1964

 

 

An Act

To enforce the constitutional right to vote, to confer jurisdiction upon the district courts of the United States to provide injunctive 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.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That this Act may be cited as the "Civil Rights Act of 1964".

 

To see the entire document click here: www.ourdocuments.gov

 

 

On July 2, 1964 the Civil Rights Act was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. It was made aware to the media so that it would be heard by all of the United States. At the signing “all the leaders of the civil rights movement, the most powerful members of Congress, and the key figures of the Justice Department had been invited to share the moment that would crown their labors and establish the law” (3 Levine).

 

This law abolished job discrimination and because of this law the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission was born. “It outlawed segregation in all publicly supported facilities and certain establishments serving the general public. It strengthened protections of equality in voting and in education. It required policies of racial equity in every institution that accepted a dollar of federal assistance (4 Levine).

 

Many different events had lead up to this monumental event like the landmark case Brown vs. The Board of Education, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the Little Rock Standoff. Many horrific acts of violence occurred during the years of the civil rights movement, murders of civil rights activists, black churches and homes burned, and assaults by law enforcement officials on peaceful protesters. Ten years of racial violence had occurred to finally achieve desegregation and the equal treatment of not only blacks, but all minorities and women.

 


 

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Pre-Civil Rights Act

 

Brown vs. The Board of Education

 

Rosa Parks

In the history of the Civil Rights movement, Rosa Parks can be seen as the starting point for the progression of anti-segregation that lead up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Rosa parks said, “the only tired I was, was tired of giving in” (Collier 61). She had refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man and she was arrested for it. When she was arrested as she explained in her story, “They did not put their hands on me or force me into the car” (Collier 62). The police did not beat Rosa Parks or be aggressive towards her; they simply put her in the car and took her to jail. She was being arrested for breaking the law. She broke had broken the segregation laws.
After Rosa parks was released from jail she was given a trial date and sent on her way. Edgar Nixon, president of the local chapter of the NAACP, asked Rosa if she would be willing to make her case a test case against segregation. She supported the decision and the case went to trial.
Rosa Parks being arrested and going to jail was what started the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The Women Political Council decided to organize a boycott of the buses starting on the 5th of December 1955. The Council ran off 35,000 handbills and they were taken to all the black schools so they could be taken home to the parents. The handbills told of what had happened to Rosa Parks and asked for everyone to stay off the buses for that Monday of the 5th. Along with the handbills, through Edgar Nixon who contacted Reverend Ralph David Abernathy of the First Baptist Church’s to organize black ministers to mobilize the community. They thought that the ministers would be able to do this better than anyone else.
All of the eighteen black cab companies in town had agreed to help out with the boycott. They would stop at all the bus stops and only charge ten cents for a ride, the same as the bus fair. On Monday morning the black community stood at the bus stops to ride with cab companies, caught rides with people who owned automobile’s, or walked to work. Not every black person stayed off the buses. Some did not want to be inconvenienced or they did not know about the boycott. “Never before had black people demonstrated so clearly how much those city buses depended on their business. More important, never before had the black community of Montgomery united in protest against segregation on the buses” (Collier 68).
On that same Monday Rosa Parks went to the courthouse for her trial. Her lawyers Charles Langford and Fred Gray had entered a plea of “Not Guilty” for her. They were not planning on winning the case for her. They actually wanted her to be found guilty so they could appeal her case and take it to a higher court. In the higher court system they could get the segregation laws changed. Rosa Parks was found guilty and given a suspended sentence, with a $10.00 fine and a $4.00 court cost.
Reverend Ralph David Abernathy and other ministers decided to form the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). They did not want to leave the organizing to an established organization like the NAACP. The NAACP was a weak organization in Alabama and was it was hard to get people to join. They also did not want this demonstration to be held on account of outside protester. When they decided that they should elect a president for the MLA they elected a new Reverent to Montgomery, Martin Luther King, Jr. They figured that since he was new to the area he would be a good choice since he had not made strong enemies or friends. That night they had a meeting at the Holt Street Church, a church in the heart of the black community. They had so many people show up that they had to set up a loudspeaker outside so all the hundreds of people standing outside the church could hear. The agenda of this meeting was to see if the community should continue the boycott.  The MLA had a list of demands to present to the bus company and to the city’s white leaders. “There were three demands: (1) courteous treatment on the buses; (2) first-come, first served seating, with whites in front and blacks in back; (3) hiring of black drivers for the black bus routes” (Collier 70). They took a vote and it was unanimous that the boycott would proceed.

Many people lost their jobs as a result of the boycott. The black cab owners were threatened by the police to charge the standard fair price of forty-five cents instead of the ten cents they were charging. Eventually the police started arresting the black cab drivers. The MIA asked the community for volunteer drivers. The church gathered money and started buying station wagons. “After a while a sophisticated system was developed. There were twenty private cars and fourteen station wagons. There were thirty-two pickup and transfer sites, and scheduled service from five thirty in the morning until twelve-thirty at night at night. About 30,000 people were transported to and from work every day” (72).

 

On November 13, 1956 the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to segregate the Montgomery busses.  The black community stayed of the buses until December 20, 1956 when the written order arrived. The Montgomery bus Boycott lasted more than a year.

For more information on Rosa Parks go to www.rosaparks.org

The Little Rock Standoff

 

 

In the city of Little Rock, Arkansas the city’s Board of Education had decided that it would act in accordance with the Brown ruling just after its establishment. The Board made plans to desegregate the high schools by the fall of 1957 and have all schools desegregated by the fall of 1963. Seventeen black students were picked to be the first to enter the desegregated school. By the fall of 1957 eight had dropped out leaving nine. Governor Orval Faubus went on television the night before school was suppose to start and announced that he head deployed the Arkansas National Guard to prohibit the black students from entering the school. “Faubus said that public disturbances were imminent, and he believed that order could not be maintained if desegregation was implemented” (67 Raffel). As the black students approached the school they were turned back by a aggressive mob of whites that had congregated. The National Guard was also there to detour the students.

A Federal Judge named Ronald Davis had the Department of Justice obtain information of who was resisting the court order. Faubus informed the President Dwight Eisenhower that he was going to resist the order and expect the President to understand. The President responded that “he would honor his oath to support and uphold the Constitution” (67 Raffel).The President and Governor Faubus meet to discuss the matter at hand. Eisenhower thought that he should keep the National Guard there but change their orders.

Faubus did not change the orders but when the judge ordered that the National Guard and Faubus were obstructing desegregation. The Governor withdrew his troops until a safe return of the black students could be made.

The Black students tried again on September 23 to enter the school, but were meet by an angry crowd. The crowd had armed itself and could not be controlled by local law enforcement. “ Ten thousand members of the Arkansas National Guard were nationalized, and 1000 combat ready paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division, veterans of the Korean War, arrived on the scene” (68 Raffel). The black student began their education at Central High School.

In spite of rather seeing the High School become desegregated Governor Faubus had all three closed. The schools were eventually reopened on a desegregation basis. This event showed that a state has to do to protect the rights of its people even in the event of violence. This also showed “the supremacy of the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court in upholding the U.S. Constitution over the actions of governors and state legislators” (69 Raffel).

 


 

 

 

 

 

Post-Civil Rights Act

Segregation Today

 

 

 

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