The Civil Rights Act of 1964

On July 2, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, using 72 pens that he distributed to supporters including Martin Luther King Jr., who stood behind him. The act outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in employment, public accommodations, and federally funded programs. It prohibited segregation in restaurants, theaters, hotels, and stores — ending the Jim Crow system that had governed the American South since the 1870s. The legislation had been proposed by President John F. Kennedy in June 1963, inspired in part by the brutality of Birmingham police commissioner Bull Connor, whose fire hoses and attack dogs turned against peaceful Black demonstrators shocked the nation on live television. After Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, Johnson marshaled the bill through Congress, overcoming a 54-day filibuster by Southern senators. To break the filibuster, the Senate invoked cloture for only the second time on a civil rights bill, passing 73-27. Johnson reportedly told an aide: "We have lost the South for a generation." He was right — the Democratic Party's embrace of civil rights realigned American politics for decades. The Civil Rights Act, together with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, dismantled the legal architecture of American apartheid.