1964
Johnson Signs Civil Rights Act
On this day in 1964, U.S. President Lyndon B.
Johnson signs into law the historic Civil Rights Act in a nationally televised
ceremony at the White House.
In the landmark 1954 case Brown v. Board of
Education, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in schools
was unconstitutional. The 10 years that followed saw great strides for the
African-American civil rights movement, as non-violent demonstrations won
thousands of supporters to the cause. Memorable landmarks in the struggle
included the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955–sparked by the refusal of Alabama
resident Rosa Parks to give up her seat on a city bus to a white woman–and
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “I have a dream” speech at a rally of hundreds
of thousands in Washington, D.C., in 1963.
As the strength of the civil rights movement
grew, John F. Kennedy made passage of a new civil rights bill one of the
platforms of his successful 1960 presidential campaign. As Kennedy’s vice
president, Johnson served as chairman of the President’s Committee on Equal
Employment Opportunities. After Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963,
Johnson vowed to carry out his proposals for civil rights reform.
The Civil Rights Act fought tough opposition
in the House and a lengthy, heated debate in the Senate before being approved
in July 1964. For the signing of the historic legislation, Johnson invited
hundreds of guests to a televised ceremony in the White House’s East Room.
After using more than 75 pens to sign the bill, he gave them away as mementoes
of the historic occasion, according to tradition. One of the first pens went to
King, leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), who called
it one of his most cherished possessions. Johnson gave two more to Senators
Hubert Humphrey and Everett McKinley Dirksen, the Democratic and Republican
managers of the bill in the Senate.
The most sweeping civil rights legislation
passed by Congress since the post-Civil War Reconstruction era, the Civil
Rights Act prohibited racial discrimination in employment and education and
outlawed racial segregation in public places such as schools, buses, parks and
swimming pools. In addition, the bill laid important groundwork for a number of
other pieces of legislation–including the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which set
strict rules for protecting the right of African Americans to vote–that have
since been used to enforce equal rights for women as well as all minorities.