The Principal Federal Civil Rights Legislation

The '64 and '65 Acts revolutionized politics in the southwestern and helped that region participate more amply in the nation's progress. Blacks, an new(prenominal)(prenominal) ethnic and racial minorities, and women benefited greatly from the obliging rights legislation of the 1960s, just efforts since then by African Americans to participate more fully in American society have largely been stymied.

harmonise to Schlesinger, "after the collapse of Reconstruction, the ex-slaves and their descendants had been consigned to legal and social inferiority, bury by the courts, the Congress, and by Presidents." Weisbrot said that "between 1865 and 1869 Congress adopted three amendments to the Constitution [the 13th, 14th and 15th] that for the first time guaranteed blacks freedom, citizenship, and suffrage." Nevertheless, through with(predicate) poll taxes, literacy tests, Jim Crow segregation laws, and by lynching and other forms of intimidation, blacks in the South were effectively denied all the foregoing rights.

match to Morris, three major factors caused civil rights concerns to rise to the fore of American politics in the 1960s:

1. "The millions of blacks achieving relative prosperity in the North and communicating back to the South that there was an secondary to feudal submission." The great migration of blacks to northern industrial cities had begun before earth War I and continued unabated, except for the Depression years.

2. The drive of World War II. The armed

Beschloss, Michael R. (Ed.). Taking Charge The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-1964. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.

Caro, Robert A. The days of Lyndon Johnson Means of Ascent. New York: Knopf, 1990.

Public opinion during the summer of 1963 was locomote in the direction of supporting the enactment of a civil rights bill. A Gallup poll taken between June 21 and June 26, 1963 showed that a plurality, 49 to 42 percent, supported the integration of public accommodations. The process on Washington and King's 'I have a dream' speech on August 28, 1963 went off without incident. However, passage of Kennedy's civil rights bill was by no means certain when the President was assassinated on November 22, 1963.

Andrews said "by late November the administration's bill languished in committee."

Schlesinger, Arthur M., jr. Robert Kennedy and His Times. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978.

Civil Rights Laws and White Backlash

What caused this strategy to change in favor of a more confrontational approach was a series of crises in 1961-1963 between civil rights activists and segregationist forces, which neutered the perceptions of the problem, not only of the Kennedys but for a great some(prenominal) American whites in the North. Farmer later said: "we think the Freedom Rides with the specific intention of creating a crisis." First in South Carolina and later in Anniston and Birmingham, Alabama, the Freedom Riders met with serious, organized hysteria by white extremists while law enforcement officials stood aside. Robert Kennedy became directly knotty and arranged safe passage for the Freedom Riders. He similarly dispatched 500 federal marshals to protect them. At his behest, the interstate highway Commerce Commission issued an order desegregating public facilities used in and around interstate commerce. At this point, however, the civil rights leaders and the Kennedys were marching to somewhat different tunes. Halberstam said: "King felt that the Kennedys were pull their feet o
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