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The Civil Rights Act of 1964 |
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On June 10, 1964, civil rights supporters in the United States Senate successfully overcame a Southern filibuster and thereby set the stage for the U.S. Congress to enact the most significant civil rights bill in American history. The Civil Rights Act of 1964racially integrated restaurants, snack bars, hotels, motels, swimming pools, and all other places of public accommodation in the nation. It provided for a cut-off of funds to any U.S. Government supported program that was found to be practicing racial discrimination. It provided for equal employment opportunity in the workplace, for women as well as racial, religious, and ethnic minorities.
The most significant impact of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the almost immediate elimination of racial discrimination in places of public accommodation through the United States. Five months after Lyndon Johnson signed the 1963-64 civil rights bill into law, the Supreme Court ruled that the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitutiongave the Congress all the legal power it needed to integrate hotels, motels, restaurants, snack bars, swimming pools, etc. In the decision, Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, the high court defined the concept of commerce broadly, applying the new civil rights law to restaurants that received their food and supplies from out of state, even when their customers all came from within the state.
In addition to opening up public accommodations to African Americans and other minorities, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 instituted the hotly debated "cutoff" of U.S. Government funds to governmental programs that practiced discrimination. As the backers of this provision hoped, the need and desire for U.S. Government dollars inspired state and local governments throughout the nation, but particularly in the South, to integrate all their facilities and services. Congress subsequently used the "cutoff" extensively as a means of getting state governments to comply with congressional law, particularly when Congress passed legislation guaranteeing equal access to public facilities for women and the physically handicapped.
It could be argued that the most important provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the one instituting equal employment opportunity. There was an immediate and highly visible increase in the number of women and minority group members who gained employment in the nation's factories and offices. The work force in the United States, particularly the highly skilled and professional zed work force, went from being predominantly white male to having substantially increased proportions of women and minorities.
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