President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law Public Law 88-352, 78 Stat. 241, commonly known at the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
His predecessor, the assassinated John F. Kennedy, had called for such a law in June of the previous year. He did so in the aftermath of many Civil Rights actions, the latest of which was the Birmingham campaign then just concluded, which had included the Children's March and King's Letter from Birmingham Jail.
The original proposal was bottled up in the House after it had been passed out of Judiciary and sent to Rules, chaired by segregationist Howard Smith of Virginia.
After Kennedy's assassination, Johnson called for passage of the bill as the best way of honoring, yet an attempted discharge petition did not get sufficient votes until the Members returned in 1964, those especially in the North having heard from their constituents on the issue.
And then there was the Senate.
Majority Leader Mike Mansfield did not refer the bill to Senate Judiciary, chaired by the segregationist James Eastland of Mississippi, but waived the second reading and asked that the bill be considered directly by the entire Senate. This was briefly filibustered - and I am quite well aware that filibustering such a procedural motion is a precedent for what Senate Republicans often do today - but in March the bill came before the entire Senate, where a group 18 Southern Democrats, led by Richard Russell of Georgia, made clear their intent to filibuster as long as necessary to prevent passage.
There was no C-Span in those days. One might wonder the impact of people seeing the actual filibuster. I suspect there would have been pressure to move to cloture far more quickly than it actually occurred.
There are two names that stand out in the filibuster, both men later serving as President Pro Tempore of the Senate. The first was Strom Thurmond, then a Democrat from South Carolina. The other was Robert Byrd of W. Virginia. The bill was managed by Hubert Humphrey of MN, who had succeeded in getting a civil rights plank into the Democratic platform in 1948, a move that had led Strom Thurmond and others walking out of that convention as Thurmond running as a segregationist Dixiecrat in the Presidential election.
Humphrey finally felt he had the 67 votes then necessary for cloture, but 6 were wavering. As I have noted, one key vote was of the dying Clair Engel of California, who had lost the ability to speak, was brought into the Senate on a stretcher, and when his name was called pointed to his eye - despite Senate rules requiring a Senator to speak his vote and have it repeated by the clerk, the clerk simply noted that Engel had voted Aye, and the cloture ultimately received 71 votes - knowing that cloture would be achieved gave several more senators cover to vote in its favor. This was only the second time in almost 4 decades that the Senate had been able to achieve cloture.
It is hard to think of a piece of legislation in my lifetime that has had a greater impact upon our society and our nation. This was the first of a string of bills during Johnson's Presidency that attempt to move the nation past its heritage of racial and sexual discrimination. The next few years would see things like the Voting Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Act.
The version of the bill that became law was weaker than what had originally passed the House, but still it was sweeping.
Title I addressed unequal provisions for voting registration.
Title II addressed public accomodations.
Title III banned states and local governments from denying access to things like parks, pools, recreation centers and other public facilities on the basis of race, gender, religion or ethnicity.
Title IV gave the Attorney General the right to intervene by filing suit to enforce provisions of the Act, including encouraging school desegration - this was necessary despite the Brown decision in 1954 because some states - notably Virginia with its program of Massive Resistance, led intellectually by the fiery editorials of James Jackson Kilpatrick in a Richmond newspaper - took the requirement of the 2nd Brown decision of 1955 to integrate with all deliberate speed and did all in their power to prevent integrating public schools
Title V reinforced provisions of earlier legislation, specifically by expanding the Civil Rights Commission established in 1957
Title VI used the power of the federal purse - any agency not abiding by the Law could lose its federal funding
Title VII moved to ban most discrimination in hiring (in anything that could be construed as interstate commerce, for example) on the basis of race, color, gender, religion or national origin.
Title VIII required the compilation of data on voting registration and voting, information that would later be used in federal actions under the Voting Rights Act of 1965
Title IX made it easier to move civil rights cases from state to federal courts - necessary given the history of actions by state courts in the Deep South (this section did not originally include what we think of as Title IX, which led to the explosion of women's sports - that was added in 1972)
Title X established a Community Relations Service that provided a mechanism for resolving complaints about discrimination without having to go to court
Title XI allowed for fining and/or imprisoning for Civil Contempt for violating many of the provisions of the Act, notably the public accommodations in Title II and those in Titles III - VII.
It was a sweeping law. But laws by themselves do not necessarily quickly change societally established patterns of behavior. Thus on public accommodations, when the owner of a small restaurant named Pickrick handed out axe handles to his white customers rather than abide by the public accommodations of the law, Lester Maddox became enough of a public figure to get himself elected Governor of Georgia.
Still, I teach in an integrated school. I have students of mixed race background. The establishments in the community in which I teach and those in the community in Virginia where I live no longer discriminate on the basis of race. Racism is still present - as is sexism, religious prejudice, and discrimination against some groups of immigrants. As we are seeing in the differences on gay rights issues, including marriage equality, by and large younger generations are more comfortable with those who are different than are their elders, those my age and older.
In 1963, people like the Governor and the state police in Mississippi tried to prevent the all-white Mississippi State team from playing an integrated team in the quarter finals. State played the game, losing to eventual national champion Chicago Loyola, which started 4 blacks including All-American Jerry Harkness. It is not that racially mixed teams were unknown - in the mid 1950s San Francisco won two consecutive national championships starting Bill Russell and KC Jones, among others. Ohio State played in 3 consecutive finals with Mel Noel in the starting lineup, losing twice to a Cincinnati team the was integrated. Finally, in 1967, the all black starting lineup of Texas Western defeated Rupp's Runts, as the last all-white Kentucky team lead by Pat Riley, was known. Sports was helping change the national understanding, as had happened with Joe Louis in boxing (Jack Johnson not being given the credit he perhaps deserved), Jackie Robinson in baseball, and increasingly in the NBA with teams becoming increasingly black in composition.
Eventually the Voting Rights Act - which would not have been possible without both the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the conscience of the nation being shocked by the events at the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, AL - would lead to blacks getting elected to public office in MS and elsewhere in the Deep South - until then the only black members of the House were from places like New York and Chicago, cities with large enough black populations to have heavily black majority districts drawn.
It is 37 years since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law.
Our nation has come a long way.
We have elected Black Members of the House from districts that are far from majority Black - think J C Watts in Oklahoma and Gary Franks in Connecticut in previous times, think even of a teaparty favorite like Allen West from Florida in the current House.
We have still only had a few Black Senators since the 17th Amendment provided for popular voting for the Senate - Brooks of MA, and three from Illinois: Mosely Braun, Obama and Burris (the latter appointed when the former resigned to become President).
We have had blacks heading major corporations.
Women are also far more integrated into all aspect of American life, even as there remain places that can and do discriminate: the public accommodations provision allowed an exemption for private clubs without defining what such clubs were.
For more than half of my 65 years, officially this nation no longer accepts such discrimination. That is good. It is unfortunate that some seek to roll back the clock, that they are willing to use fear of "the other" or the ability to demonize a particular group as a way of maintaining privilege and power for themself.
47 years ago today. July 2, 1964. A date worth taking time remembering, for the bill signed into law that day.
Peace.