Civil Rights Act of 1964

Based on Wikipedia: Civil Rights Act of 1964

A Dying Senator Points to His Eye

On June 10, 1964, Senator Clair Engle of California was wheeled onto the floor of the United States Senate. He was dying of brain cancer. He could not speak. When the clerk called his name for the vote, Engle raised his hand and pointed to his left eye.

He was voting "aye."

Seven weeks later, Engle was dead. But his vote—that silent, physical gesture from a man whose body was failing him but whose conviction was not—helped end the longest filibuster in Senate history and pass the most sweeping civil rights legislation since the end of slavery.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It banned segregation in schools and public places. It prohibited employers from discriminating in hiring. It transformed American society in ways that reverberate to this day. And getting it passed required one of the most dramatic legislative battles in American history—a battle that involved assassination, parliamentary maneuvering, and senators talking for seventy-two consecutive days to try to kill it.

The Problem with the Private Sector

To understand why the 1964 act was so hard to pass, you need to understand a Supreme Court decision from 1883.

After the Civil War, Congress had passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which banned discrimination in hotels, trains, theaters, and other public accommodations. But eight years later, the Supreme Court struck it down. The justices ruled that while the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited state governments from discriminating, Congress had no power to regulate discrimination by private businesses.

This distinction matters enormously. A "whites only" sign at a government courthouse was unconstitutional. But a "whites only" sign at a privately owned lunch counter? According to the Court, the federal government couldn't do anything about it.

This legal reasoning became the foundation for Jim Crow. For nearly a century, it meant that African Americans could be turned away from restaurants, hotels, theaters, and stores—and the federal government was powerless to stop it. States in the South enforced segregation through law. Businesses throughout the country practiced it by choice. And the Supreme Court had declared that private discrimination was beyond the reach of federal civil rights legislation.

The New Deal Changes Everything

The Great Depression transformed American law in ways that had nothing to do with race—but would eventually make civil rights legislation possible.

Before the 1930s, the Supreme Court routinely struck down federal regulations of private business. The government couldn't set minimum wages. It couldn't limit working hours. It couldn't tell businesses how to operate. The Court saw the Constitution as a shield protecting the private sector from government interference.

But President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal demanded a more expansive federal government. After a bitter standoff with the Court—including Roosevelt's controversial attempt to pack it with additional justices—the Court began to change. The justices started interpreting the Commerce Clause more broadly. This is the part of the Constitution that gives Congress the power "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States."

If a business affected interstate commerce—if goods crossed state lines, if customers came from other states, if the economic ripples of an action spread across state borders—then Congress could regulate it.

This legal revolution had an unexpected consequence. If Congress could regulate labor practices under the Commerce Clause, couldn't it also regulate discriminatory practices? If a hotel served travelers from other states, wasn't it engaged in interstate commerce? The legal path to civil rights legislation had been quietly opened.

Small Steps Before the Giant Leap

Change came slowly, through executive orders and modest legislation.

In 1941, with America about to enter World War Two, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802. This was the first federal anti-discrimination order in American history. It prohibited racial discrimination in the defense industry. The order came partly because of pressure from Black leaders who were planning a massive march on Washington to protest discrimination in war industries.

After Roosevelt died, President Harry Truman went further. He integrated the armed forces through executive order. He proposed a comprehensive civil rights act—the first such proposal of the twentieth century. Congress wouldn't pass it, but the idea was now on the table.

President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first civil rights legislation since 1875. But it was deliberately weak. It focused narrowly on voting rights, and even there it had limited effect. In some majority-Black counties in the South, Black voter registration stood at zero percent. In ninety-seven other majority-Black counties, fewer than five percent of eligible Black voters were registered. The 1957 act barely moved these numbers. By 1960, Black voting had increased by only three percentage points nationwide.

But the 1957 act did create something important: the United States Commission on Civil Rights and the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. These would become crucial tools for enforcement once stronger legislation passed.

Birmingham and the Television Camera

John F. Kennedy won the presidency in 1960 with seventy percent of the Black vote. But he was reluctant to push civil rights legislation. His victory had been narrow. Democrats held Congress, but many of those Democrats were segregationist Southerners. Kennedy calculated that pushing too hard on civil rights would cost him Southern support and doom his other legislative priorities.

He planned to wait until his second term.

Then came Birmingham.

In the spring of 1963, civil rights activists launched a campaign of sit-ins, marches, and boycotts in Birmingham, Alabama—one of the most segregated cities in America. The city's Commissioner of Public Safety, Bull Connor, responded with fire hoses and police dogs. Television cameras captured it all.

Americans across the country watched footage of water cannons knocking children off their feet. They saw dogs lunging at peaceful protesters. They witnessed police officers beating nonviolent demonstrators. And the world watched too.

This was the age when television was becoming the dominant medium of American life, and the images from Birmingham were broadcast globally. The violence embarrassed the United States on the world stage during the Cold War, when America was competing with the Soviet Union for the allegiance of newly independent nations in Africa and Asia. How could America claim to represent freedom and democracy while treating its Black citizens this way?

Kennedy realized he could no longer wait.

Kennedy's Address

On June 11, 1963, Kennedy addressed the nation on television. He called civil rights "a moral issue" that was "as old as the scriptures and as clear as the American Constitution." He announced that he would send Congress legislation giving all Americans "the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public—hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments."

The same day, he met with Republican congressional leaders to discuss the bill. Two days later, both the Senate Minority Leader, Everett Dirksen of Illinois, and the Senate Majority Leader, Mike Mansfield of Montana, expressed support—though they balked at the provisions requiring equal access to public accommodations.

On June 19, Kennedy sent his bill to Congress.

Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers, warned that if Congress failed to pass it, the country would face "another civil war."

Strengthening the Bill

The bill went first to the House of Representatives, where it landed in the Judiciary Committee. The chairman was Emanuel Celler, a Democrat from New York who had been in Congress since 1923 and had long championed civil rights.

Celler didn't just pass Kennedy's bill through his committee. He strengthened it. His committee added provisions banning racial discrimination in employment. They included greater protection for Black voters. They expanded the desegregation requirements to cover all publicly owned facilities, not just schools. They gave the Attorney General authority to file lawsuits protecting individuals whose constitutional rights had been violated.

This last provision was particularly important to civil rights organizations. Known as "Title Three," it had been stripped from the 1957 and 1960 acts because it was considered too controversial. It would allow the federal government to intervene when police brutalized peaceful protesters or suppressed the free speech rights of Black citizens. The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights—a coalition of seventy liberal and labor organizations—pressed hard for its inclusion.

In late August 1963, the March on Washington brought hundreds of thousands of people to the nation's capital. This was where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. Afterward, the march's organizers met with Kennedy to discuss the civil rights bill.

By October, Kennedy was calling congressional leaders to the White House to line up votes. The Judiciary Committee reported the bill out in November. Then it went to the Rules Committee.

Howard Smith's Bottleneck

Howard Smith was a Democrat from Virginia and a staunch segregationist. He was also chairman of the House Rules Committee, which controls when and how legislation comes to the House floor for a vote. Smith made clear he intended to keep the civil rights bill bottled up indefinitely.

He was still bottling it up when, on November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

Johnson Takes Over

Lyndon Baines Johnson was a Texan who had spent decades in Congress mastering the art of legislative politics. As Senate Majority Leader in the 1950s, he had learned exactly how the Senate worked—how to count votes, how to build coalitions, how to pressure reluctant colleagues. Now he was president, and he was determined to pass Kennedy's civil rights bill.

Five days after the assassination, Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress. "No memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy's memory," he declared, "than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long."

Johnson turned Kennedy's death into a mandate for civil rights. To honor the fallen president, Congress had to act.

Meanwhile, Chairman Celler began gathering signatures for a "discharge petition"—a parliamentary maneuver that would force the bill out of the Rules Committee and onto the House floor. This was rarely used, and many representatives who supported the bill were reluctant to violate normal House procedure. By the time Congress left for its winter recess, Celler was still fifty signatures short.

But over the recess, public opinion in the North swung decisively behind the bill. When Congress returned, it became clear that Celler would get his signatures. To avoid the humiliation of having his committee overruled by a discharge petition, Howard Smith relented. He allowed the bill to pass through the Rules Committee.

On February 10, 1964, the House of Representatives passed the Civil Rights Act by a vote of 290 to 130.

The Senate's Southern Bloc

Now the bill faced its greatest obstacle: the Senate filibuster.

A filibuster is when senators keep talking—and talking, and talking—to prevent a vote from occurring. Under the rules at the time, ending a filibuster required a two-thirds supermajority. This meant that a determined minority could block legislation indefinitely by simply refusing to stop talking.

Southern senators had used the filibuster to kill civil rights legislation for decades. Never in the Senate's history had a civil rights filibuster been defeated. The Southern bloc was confident they could do it again.

But first, Johnson had to get the bill to the Senate floor.

Normally, bills go to a committee before the full Senate considers them. The civil rights bill would have gone to the Judiciary Committee—chaired by James Eastland, a Democrat from Mississippi who was firmly opposed to civil rights. If the bill went to Eastland's committee, it would never emerge.

So Majority Leader Mansfield used an unusual procedural tactic. He waived the customary second reading of the bill that would have sent it to committee. Instead, he gave it a second reading immediately and sent it directly to the Senate floor.

On March 30, 1964, debate began.

Seventy-Two Days

Eighteen Southern Democratic senators, joined by Republican John Tower of Texas, launched the filibuster. Their leader was Richard Russell of Georgia, one of the most powerful men in the Senate. Russell was blunt about his purpose: "We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would tend to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our states."

Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, still a Democrat at this point, denounced the bill as "unconstitutional, unnecessary, unwise, and extending beyond the realm of reason." He called it "the worst civil rights package ever presented to the Congress," comparing it to the Reconstruction era—which, in Thurmond's view, was not a compliment.

The filibuster ground on. Day after day, week after week, senators talked. They read recipes into the record. They recited poetry. They discussed anything and everything except allowing a vote.

Meanwhile, supporters of the bill were negotiating. The key figure was Everett Dirksen, the Republican Minority Leader from Illinois. Dirksen was no liberal crusader, but he believed the bill was necessary. To break the filibuster, supporters needed Republican votes. Dirksen was the man who could deliver them.

After fifty-four days, Dirksen and the bill's Democratic managers introduced a compromise. It was somewhat weaker than the House version in regulating private businesses—but not so weak that the House would refuse to accept it.

On the morning of June 10, Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia finally ended his personal filibuster after fourteen hours and thirteen minutes. The bill had occupied the Senate for sixty working days, including six Saturdays.

The vote to end debate—called "cloture"—required sixty-seven votes. The bill's manager, Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, believed he had them. When the roll was called, seventy-one senators voted to end the filibuster. Twenty-nine voted to continue it.

Never before had the Senate mustered the votes to break a civil rights filibuster. In the thirty-seven years since 1927, the Senate had voted for cloture on any measure only once.

And that's when Clair Engle, dying of brain cancer, unable to speak, pointed to his eye.

The Final Votes

On June 19, 1964, the Senate passed the bill by a vote of 73 to 27. Twenty-seven Republicans voted in favor; six voted against. Forty-six Democrats voted in favor; twenty-one voted against.

The pattern tells its own story. The opposition came overwhelmingly from Southern Democrats. Democrats from outside the South voted for the bill by enormous margins. Republicans, despite representing the party of Lincoln, were somewhat divided—though a clear majority supported civil rights.

Because the Senate had amended the bill, it had to go back to the House for another vote. On July 2, 1964, the House passed the final version, 289 to 126.

That same evening, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law at the White House. He used seventy-five pens during the signing ceremony, distributing them afterward as souvenirs to the bill's supporters.

What the Act Did

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was sweeping in its scope.

Title One addressed voting rights, prohibiting the unequal application of voter registration requirements. It didn't end voter suppression—that would require the Voting Rights Act of 1965—but it laid groundwork.

Title Two banned discrimination in public accommodations: hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and all establishments engaged in interstate commerce. This directly targeted the "whites only" signs that had humiliated Black Americans for decades.

Title Three prohibited state and local governments from denying access to public facilities based on race, color, religion, or national origin.

Title Four addressed desegregation of public schools, authorizing the Attorney General to file lawsuits to force integration.

Title Six prohibited discrimination by programs receiving federal funds—a powerful lever, since so much of American education and infrastructure depends on federal money.

And Title Seven banned employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to enforce these provisions.

Wait—sex?

Yes. The prohibition on sex discrimination was added late in the legislative process, reportedly by Howard Smith himself. Some historians believe he added it hoping to sink the entire bill by making it too controversial. If so, the tactic backfired spectacularly. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 became the foundation for decades of litigation against workplace discrimination based on sex.

The Constitutional Foundation

Congress based the act on several constitutional provisions. Most importantly, it relied on the Commerce Clause—that same provision whose expansive interpretation during the New Deal had opened the door to federal regulation of private business.

A segregated lunch counter might seem like a purely local matter. But if the lunch counter serves food that crossed state lines, or if its customers include interstate travelers, then it's engaged in interstate commerce. And Congress can regulate interstate commerce.

The Supreme Court unanimously upheld this reasoning in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, decided just months after the act was signed. A motel owner argued that Congress couldn't force him to serve Black customers. The Court disagreed. Because the motel served travelers from other states, it was engaged in interstate commerce, and Congress could prohibit its discriminatory practices.

It was an elegant solution to the problem that had blocked civil rights legislation since 1883. The Fourteenth Amendment might not give Congress power over private discrimination—but the Commerce Clause did.

The Ongoing Struggle

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 didn't end racism in America. It didn't immediately integrate schools or guarantee Black voting rights or end police brutality. Many of its enforcement provisions were initially weak.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 would follow, addressing gaps in the 1964 law. Enforcement would be uneven. Courts would interpret the act's provisions in ways both expansive and restrictive. The struggle for civil rights would continue for decades—and continues still.

But the 1964 act transformed what was legal in America. It made the federal government an active participant in fighting discrimination rather than a passive observer. It established the principle that the national government had both the power and the responsibility to protect the civil rights of all its citizens.

And it proved that determined legislators could overcome even the most entrenched opposition—that a filibuster designed to preserve segregation could be broken, that a bill written to create equality could become law.

Senator Clair Engle, pointing silently to his eye, understood what was at stake. He showed up when it mattered. He cast his vote the only way he could. And he became part of a moment that changed American history.

Connections and Context

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 exists within a long arc of American history—the unfulfilled promise of the Declaration of Independence, the Civil War amendments to the Constitution, the betrayal of Reconstruction, the long night of Jim Crow, and the awakening of the civil rights movement.

It's worth noting what made the 1964 act possible when earlier attempts had failed. Several factors converged:

Television changed everything. The visual evidence of segregation's brutality—broadcast into living rooms across America and around the world—created political pressure that abstract arguments never could.

The Cold War mattered. America's segregation was a propaganda gift to the Soviet Union, undermining American claims to lead the "free world."

The movement built power. From the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 to the lunch counter sit-ins to the Freedom Rides to Birmingham, activists created a sustained campaign that made civil rights impossible to ignore.

And Johnson's legislative mastery proved decisive. A president who knew the Senate inside out, who understood which levers to pull and which arms to twist, who could transform a national tragedy into legislative momentum—this mattered enormously.

The act also reveals the strange political geography of mid-century America. The Democratic Party contained both the strongest supporters of civil rights (Northern liberals) and its fiercest opponents (Southern segregationists). This coalition would eventually fracture. Within a few years, Strom Thurmond—who had called the 1964 act the worst civil rights legislation ever—would switch to the Republican Party. The political realignment that followed reshaped American politics for generations.

Today, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is often cited as one of the most significant pieces of legislation in American history. Its provisions continue to be litigated and interpreted. Its principles—that discrimination is wrong, that the federal government has a role in protecting civil rights, that all Americans deserve equal treatment—remain central to ongoing debates about what America is and what it should become.

And somewhere in the historical record, there's a notation that on June 10, 1964, Senator Clair Engle of California, unable to speak, pointed to his left eye to signal his vote for cloture.

Sometimes that's how history gets made: one silent gesture at a time.