The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination in the US based on race, colour, religion, sex or national origin. It also outlawed segregation, keeping races separate, at schools, public places and most businesses. It, and the Voting Rights Act a year later, overthrew Jim Crow.
School busing and affirmative action grew out of it as policies designed to meet its demands
It was one of the main civil rights reforms of the 1960s:
- 1964: Civil Rights Act
- 1965: Voting Rights Act
- 1965: Immigration and Nationality Act
- 1967: Loving v Virginia – overturned laws against mixed-race marriage.
- 1968: Fair Housing Act
It was not passed because of a White man in a suit, like in a Spielberg film or an American high school history book.
It was not passed because Blacks pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, proving themselves respectable, worthy of White paternalistic favour.
It was not passed because the NAACP had won a certain number of important court cases.
Instead it was passed because non-violent, grassroots protests, like those led by Martin Luther King, Jr, CORE and SNCC, were making the South ungovernable.
Executive Order 11246, signed a year later, gave the Act teeth by cutting off money from the US government to any contractor that did not make a good faith effort to avoid discrimination.
Disparate impact: discrimination could be proved if practices that had no sound reason had a “disparate impact”, intended or not. For example, height requirements for police officers count as discrimination because they favour men over women for no good reason.
John McWhorter says the Act has left only “residual racism” against Blacks.
Is he right?
Public accomodations: The Act’s clearest achievement has been the end of racial segregation in public places. The “Whites Only” signs have come down. The Green Book, which informed Black travellers where they could shop, eat and sleep, has been long out of print.
Employment: The Act can also be given a fair amount of credit for the rise of the Black middle-class and the rise of Blacks into important positions. On the other hand, Black unemployment is still twice the White rate. Many if not most employers are still racist. Most Blacks do not have the time or money to take them to court, cases that are hard to win without White witnesses.
Schools: are resegregating. In Board v Dowell (1991) and other rulings of the 1990s, the Supreme Court gutted school desegregation. It had already given white flight a free pass in Miliken v Bradley (1974), which came right after President Nixon packed the court with judges opposed desegregation. Today 74% of Black schoolchildren and 80% of Latinos go to segregated schools. Even many of the so-called “desegregated” schools separate students by race through tracking and standardized testing.
The police: practise racial profiling. In Alexander v Sandoval (2001) the Supreme Court, by not allowing disparate impact in such cases, made it nearly impossible for a private citizen to prove that the police practise racial profiling. And, as John Lewis noted at the March on Washington, the Act says nothing about police brutality.
See also:
- March on Washington, 1963 – its main demand was the passage of the Civil Rights Act
- Voting Rights Act of 1965
- school resegregation
- racial profiling
- The Green Book
- Jim Crow
- The Southern strategy – the Republican Party’s answer to the Civil Rights Act and other anti-racist reforms
- King’s Dream at 50: A Report Card
I have read about The Green Book. It’s an outrage that Black travellers had to be careful about the establishments they went to so they wouldn’t be turned away or even harassed.
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These ACTS that have been passed in the past, need to be reinforced, today! Not gutted like these white racists in congress are doing.
White people have went back to the days of Jim crow in every facet of life for black people in America. We as black people have been lulled into a state of contentment, that needs to be broken.
Black people have gotten too lacks with fighting for our Civil rights, because these young black people have been duped by white people’s chant and creeds of, “we are all equal” or, “color doesn’t matter” and, “Love is color blind” and last but not least, “i don’t see color” aka “I don’t see you as a black person”
White people say all this, while standing idly by as black people suffer high rates of unemployment, despite having ivy league educations, no criminal records, unequal treatment in the justice system, unequal home ownership. ect..
Also at the same time, white people are benefiting from the same system that does all the above and more to black people, yet have the nerve to utter, ‘we are all equal”. spare me…. -_-
I have talked with one young black man, 20 years old and he is filled with so much internalized racism and hate for himself and other black people as a dark skinned black man.
I am still talking to him as to open his eyes, so he can see the true culprits of his and other black people’s misery.
I don’t advocate him to hate white people, only to be worry of them and their two faced ways and to never trust a white person. Keep them at arms length as to not get burned, because its not a question of if, but when they will turn on you. He has already experienced something like this by a white woman that “acted” and “pretended” to be a “friend”. Then he finds out that she doesn’t like him and talk about him behind his back.
That’s the majority of white people for you, they smile in your black face and stab you in your black back!
This tactic has worked to the point that all these young and even some older black people are blaming their own race for our state of emergency, instead of placing the blame where it belongs, squarely on white supremacy/Racism by white people.
There isn’t a day that goes by, where a mic and Camera isn’t shoved into a black person’s face, that is more than willing to throw their own black people under the bus by blaming them for everything that is wrong with black people’s plight in America.
These ACTS need to be amended too, not gutted!
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Sondis,
Quite an insightful commentary and observation Sondis. Its a Black reality that is hard to deny. Though I am sure many other white and even Black or POC commentators will vehemently try to do so here.
But there is a subtle manipulation going on here between Black, white and other ethnic groups of Americans which is not easy to define. Its too easy or simplistic to view such changes/non changes in terms of “Black or white”. – At least this is my view.
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In 1967 interracial marriages were considered humane by the dominant white American society. Interestingly, in that same year in Australia Native Australians (Koori, Murri, etc.) were considered human beings by the dominant white Australian society. Was 1967 the year that many white people (globally) became apologetic – to some degree?
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@ leigh204
In the sundown towns across America black travelers were not only turned away or harassed but sometimes killed too, which you probably know.
Filmmaker Keith Beauchamp’s enlightened me on sundown towns in his documentary film titled ‘The Injustice Files: Sundown Towns’ (YouTube has the full video). The documentary refocuses attention on the 1968 murder of 21-year-old Carol Jenkins (Google search Carol Jenkins).
Interestingly, many people link sundown towns to the South. Sundown towns largely existed in America’s northern states. My 70-year-old dad was born and raised in Mississippi and he can’t recall any sundown towns existing in the state (even though a few sundown towns did exist). Anyway, I hope my information was helpful. Have a great day.
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These Acts can only do so much. Racism will still somehow remain through tricky ways around the system. No matter what, there are always those in high places that want to keep America a white supremacist nation, even if it means taking down the country in the process.
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Integration is overrated. Forced segregation is against human rights; however, the idea that learning, working, socializing, and starting families with white people will somehow make the lives of black people better disturbs me.
Why didn’t any laws help blacks gain education and skills for jobs? Why didn’t any of these laws help finance black businesses?
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@ Michael Cooper:
Thank you for all the information! I really appreciate it! I will definitely look into it! And have a great day to you, too! 🙂
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Pragmatist,
“Why didn’t any laws help blacks gain education and skills for jobs? Why didn’t any of these laws help finance black businesses?”
They didn’t?
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Abagond,
What’s the difference between residual racism and racism?
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This made me think of what Malcolm x said about being an American:
“I’m not a politician, not even a student of politics; in fact, I’m not a student of much of anything. I’m not a Democrat. I’m not a Republican, and I don’t even consider myself an American. If you and I were Americans, there’d be no problem. Those Honkies that just got off the boat, they’re already Americans; Polacks are already Americans; the Italian refugees are already Americans. Everything that came out of Europe, every blue-eyed thing, is already an American. And as long as you and I have been over here, we aren’t Americans yet.
Well, I am one who doesn’t believe in deluding myself. I’m not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner, unless you eat some of what’s on that plate. Being here in America doesn’t make you an American. Being born here in America doesn’t make you an American. Why, if birth made you American, you wouldn’t need any legislation; you wouldn’t need any amendments to the Constitution; you wouldn’t be faced with civil-rights filibustering in Washington, D.C., right now. They don’t have to pass civil-rights legislation to make a Polack an American.”
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Just wondering, do people think of the anti-miscegenation laws as part of Jim Crow?
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@ Solesearch
Residual racism means that, sure, there is still some racism left, but it is not a big deal any more.
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^ “Residual Racism”
Is that what it really means? “not a big deal”?
I thought it meant that it was no longer “de jure”, but “de facto” still exists, which might be a big deal in some cases.
But as it is according to McWhorter, we have to read from his original source to determine that.
Anyhow, I thought we weren’t going to have a report card on the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
(https://abagond.wordpress.com/2013/09/05/kings-dream-at-50-a-report-card/#comment-239581)
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In my estimation, and I was there as teenager in Chicago when the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed, the actual enactment of the law was no more than political theater.
The key to its passage was the support of Senate minority leader Everett Dirksen, a Republican from Illinois. Dirksen, an old-fashioned mellifluous orator considered a retro type even for his own time, put a bottom line on the situation when said on the Senate floor prior to cloture vote, “All the armies in the world cannot stop an idea whose time has come.”
Dirksen’s support allowed the Southern filibuster to be stopped by a vote of 71-29. The bill subsequently passed the Senate by a vote of 73-27.
Among the Southern senators filbustering and voting against the bill, not all of them were so viscerally terrified of it. William Fulbright later said “In order to be a statesman, you have to be elected.”
The wiser heads, I imagine, considered that Lyndon Johnson was solving for them one of their great political problem, which otherwise they would have to deal with perpetually in their courts and legislatures and on the streets. Others probably considered that it was, after all, an idea whose time had come whether they liked it or not.
One of those voting against the bill was the eventual Republican presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater. Goldwater said that he agreed with the aims of the bill but thought the constitution left the matter to the states. In this view, which was contrary to the plain language of the 14th Amendment and the grant of power to the congress it provided, Goldwater was swimming against the currents of his own party, even many of its most conservative members, who at least apparently knew how to read.
By all accounts, Goldwater was serious in his support of the aims of the Civil Rights Act. His family business, the Goldwater’s Department Store chain was among the first local businesses to hire and promote non-whites into management positions.
We have the advantage of retrospection in assessing Goldwater’s position. With continued political pressure and agitation, the aims of the Civil Rights Act would have been substantially achieved. Eventually. But this would have come at the price of a generation or more of disorder and many deaths.
Still, I want to say, Black American society remains too enamored of the idea that change can come only on the wings of apocalyptic events stage managed from far away.
That might be why it is so important for Americans to know the history of the Civil Rights movement as a people’s movement, not a leader’s movement.
Winston Churchill said of himself in the Battle of Britain, “I was not the lion, but it fell to me to give the lion’s roar”.
The same for Martin Luther King and other leaders. They may have been the lion’s roar, but the people were the lion.
Lyndon Johnson was reported as saying after the bill was signed, “We have lost the South for a generation. But the Johnson-Humphrey ticket carried the states of Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Kentuck, Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas in November, at time when Black voter participation was limited in varying degrees in all of these states. The revulsion of conservative and moderate Southern Whites at sudden rise of the New Left and the Counterculture, maybe even a sudden disgust with the traditional Southern White politician, may have fueled the movement to the Republican Party more than the passage of the Civil Rights Act. At least think about it.
In my estimation, the acceptance of the Civil Right Act as the law of the land and, soon thereafter, the acceptance of the end of legal school segregation were key tenets of Southern Republicanism. The rise of Republicanism in the South also coincided with the South’s rise to near economic parity with the North. Think about that also.
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Although governance by consent is an important reason for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, MLK making the South ungovernable was not. I think pressure to pass civil rights legislation had built up over 20 years and MLK helped push it through its final phase through tactful use of the media. So I disagree with:
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not pass because of x, y & z (my summary):
“Instead it was passed because non-violent, grassroots protests, like those led by Martin Luther King, Jr, CORE and SNCC, were making the South ungovernable.”
In 1964 the Federal government exercised almost no power on a State level other than giving and receiving money (taxes, SS), regulating interstate commerce, punishing interstate crime (FBI) and operating military bases. Questions of individual constitutional rights were left to the courts (Brown v Board of Ed.). Therefore, governance of southern states was a local matter – unless police beatings were being broadcast around the world.
Southern whites seemed fine with their governance pre-1964. You can see that they were fine with it as their congressman, almost to a man, voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It may have been a brutal and mean governance but Alabama, Georgia, Maryland, Virginia, Texas and all the others including many northern states did not seek help from the Federal government, did not ask Congress to pass legislation because blacks in Mississippi were being rowdy. Atlanta didn’t burn; Newark, Watts and Detroit burned.
So if black southern unrest did not cause passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 pass, what did?
I would like to think it passed, because it was the right thing to do. I’m far too cynical to believe that. In the end, for every action their is a cause – cause and effect. The cause is never – doing good, unless “doing good” is somehow of benefit, even if its just feeling good about yourself. So what good was the civil rights act of 1956 to Eisenhower and the Civil Rights act of 1964 to Kennedy/LBJ?
It’s useful to remember that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the culmination of 20 years of civil rights work and the exigencies of the Cold War and the need for social mobilization. Beginning with integration of the military in (I think) 1948 the Federal government began to act on every front where its writ held. Presidents understood that the United States was involved in a global struggle and had set itself up as the arbiter of freedom and democracy. Asians and Africans could not be asked to support America while apartheid was practiced at home. It was bad for business. So from the start of the Cold War Federal policy was changed to support imperial goals.
That said the civil rights act would not have passed as quickly and comprehensively as it did without MLK and the civil rights movement. MLK used the television coverage of the marches to embarrass America abroad. Television coverage of police brutality gave MLK leverage to push the President.
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The fact that the Moral Mondays grassroots movement in North Carolina is a good example of why black people in America have to protect and preserve their rights. If the GOP is left to their own devices Black America will be in retrograde. They (GOP) want things turned back to the way it was in Jim Crow. This is my opinion.
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Voter suppression is in full effect black America can’t sleep. People fought and died for Black Americans to have the privileges that we take for granted. As long as oppression and marginalization against blacks and people of color is still in effect there can be no sleeping. White supremacist are counting on black people to become lazy and not be cognizant of what’s happening.
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“Residual Racism” John Mcwhorter, (rolls eyes) UGH!!!
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Jefe said all this crazy shit:
^ “Residual Racism”
Is that what it really means? “not a big deal”?
I thought it meant that it was no longer “de jure”, but “de facto” still exists, which might be a big deal in some cases.
Legion says:
Aarrghhhhhhh! Will you p-l-e-a-s-e STOP that! All that American Academic Prose talk is making my ears bleed; nobody talks like that and what’s more, I can’t understand you!!
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Actually, I’m kidding. Abagond’s response to Solesearch sounds like an inaccurate Cliff Notes response, I don’t know that for sure, though.
But as it is according to McWhorter, we have to read from his original source to determine that.
^ Yeah, I agree with you there, even if it is in full American Academic Prose speak. 😉
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@Sole
Affirmative Action and busing were/are attempts to fix the eduction problem through integration.
However, I am not aware of any programs to help teach young black people job skills or give aid to help facilitate black businesses; if you know any please let me know.
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[…] The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination in the US based on race, colour, religion, sex or national origin. It also outlawed segregation, keeping races separate, at schools, public places and most businesses. It, and the Voting Rights Act a year later, overthrew Jim Crow.School busing and affirmative action grew out of it as policies designed to meet its demandsIt was one of the main civil rights reforms of the 1960s:1964: Civil Rights Act1965: Voting Rights Act1965: Immigration and Nationality Act1967: Loving v Virginia – overturned laws against mixed-race marriage.1968: Fair Housing ActClick through to read more. […]
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[…] Source: abagond.wordpress.com […]
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Another wonderful entry, Abagond.
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@ The Pragmatist
There was during the 1970’s a job program in New York City known as the Neighborhood Youth Corp. It was Federal money earmarked to create jobs during the summer for youths 14 – 18 whose household incomes were beneath a certain level. It paid about $38.50 a week and was a first job for many doing different types of entry level full time work in service to the local community.
The Job Corp is the only training program for young people that I’m aware of that exists today.
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@Legion,
Yeah, it was a cliff notes response, but I couldn’t say for sure if it was inaccurate or not.
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Reblogged this on theproject180blog's Blog.
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Why other people of color, from my observation, don’t seem grateful that they have these liberties afforded to them through this struggle is kind of disgusting to me. And this is coming from “other” person of color.
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