LBJ Signs the Civil Rights Act, MLK and Others Look On

• Enforces the Constitutional right to vote
(ends poll tax & literacy test).
• Justice Dept. can sue segregated schools.
• Integrates hotels, theaters, and restaurants.
• Ends discrimination in federally funded programs.
• Outlaws hiring discrimination based on race, religion, or national origin.
Speech Writing: Your job is to explain why you, a venerable southern senator, support segregation and oppose at least two sections of this law.

• Civil Rights Activists
• John Kennedy & Lyndon Johnson
• The Proposed Bill in 1963
• Exemptions (for hiring discrimination)
--Religious Institutions
--Businesses with less than 25 workers

and
• Howard “Judge” Smith (D-Virginia)
• Martha Griffiths (D-Michigan)
• Racism vs. Sexism (Discussion)
“When this bill is passed, white women will be last at the hiring gate…. It [would] be incredible … that white men would be willing to place white women at such a disadvantage except that white men have done this before …. Your grandfathers were willing, as prisoners of their own prejudice, to permit ex-slaves to vote, but not their own white wives.” –Martha Griffiths (1964)

• Strom Thurmond (D/R-South Carolina)
• Cloture
• The “Nucular” Option
A “Young” Strom Thurmond Senator Bill Frist (R-Tennessee)

Bibliography
Gwendolyn Mink, “Civil Rights Act of 1964”
Readers Companion to
US Women’s History
(Houghton Mifflin Publishers) http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/women/html/wm_0064
00_civilrightsa.htm
Viewed (6/7/05)
Linda Simmons, “Teaching Activities for the Civil Rights Act of
1964” (National Archives and Records Administration) http://www.archives.gov/digital_classroom/lessons/civil_rights_act/ci vil_rights_act.html
(Viewed 6/7/05)
US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Legislative History of Titles VII and XI of Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Washington:
Government Printing Office, 1968).
Charles and Barbara Whalen, The Longest Debate: A Legislative
History of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (Washington: Seven Locks
Press).