Table of Contents
How did the 1964 Civil Rights Act affect America?
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. The Act prohibited discrimination in public accommodations and federally funded programs. It also strengthened the enforcement of voting rights and the desegregation of schools.
How did the public react to the Civil Rights Act?
But perhaps most tellingly, CBS News found that 84% of whites and 83% of blacks believed that the act had made life better for blacks in the United States, while only 2% thought it had made life worse. These statistics serve to reaffirm the legacy of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
What impact did the civil Voting Rights Act of 1965 have on America?
It outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting. This “act to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution” was signed into law 95 years after the amendment was ratified.
Why was the Civil Rights Act of 1964 important?
With the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the federal government offered its immense power to the struggle to realize a more just and inclusive American society that had begun a century earlier with Reconstruction. But passage of the act was not the end of the story.
How did the Civil Rights Act of 1964 end Jim Crow?
The act ended the piecemeal strategy of integration by ending Jim Crow once and for all. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not end the civil rights movement, of course. White Southerners still used legal and extralegal means to deprive Black Southerners of their constitutional rights.
Who was president when the Civil Rights Act was passed?
President John F. Kennedy had proposed such a bill in June of 1963, mere months before his death, and Johnson used Kennedy’s memory to convince Americans that the time had come to address the problem of segregation. After the end of Reconstruction, White Southerners regained political power and set about reordering race relations.
What was the public opinion on the Civil Rights Act?
The 1980s saw that new generations of Americans believed that the Civil Rights Act had indeed worked. Ninety-two percent of respondents in a 1984 Attitudes and Opinions of Black Americans Poll stated that the civil rights movement had improved the lives of the black community.