The Civil Rights Act 1964 Martin Luther King Biography Cultural background The Civil Rights Act 1964 Martin Luther King Biography

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 Ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

Following the Civil War (1861-1865), a trio of constitutional amendments abolished slavery, made the former slaves citizens and gave all men the right to vote regardless of race. Nonetheless, many states– particularly in the South–used poll taxes, literacy tests and other similar measures to keep their African-American residents essentially disenfranchised. They also enforced strict segregation through “Jim Crow” laws and condoned violence from white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

When John F. Kennedy entered the White House in 1961, he initially delayed in supporting new anti-discrimination measures. But with protests springing up throughout the South – including one in Birmingham, Alabama, where police brutally suppressed nonviolent demonstrators with dogs, clubs and high-pressure fire hoses – Kennedy decided to act. In June 1963 he proposed by far the most comprehensive civil rights legislation to date, saying the United States “will not be fully free until all of its citizens are free.”

Kennedy was assassinated that November in Dallas, after which new President Lyndon B. Johnson immediately took up the cause. Black people were not allowed the following: To be in the same public places with the white people. To go the the same school as white people did. To use public bathrooms. To visit parks, restaurants, theaters, etc. People could not be payed the same salary that white people could get.

Under the Civil Rights Act, segreation (the action or state of setting someone or something apart from other people) on the grounds of race, religion or national origin was banned at all places of public accommodation, including courthouses, parks, restaurants, theaters, sports arenas and hotels. No longer could blacks and other minorities be denied service simply based on the color of their skin.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) A Baptist minister and social activist who played a key role in the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968. Inspired by advocates of nonviolence such as Mahatma Gandhi, King sought equality for African Americans.

What did he do? He was the driving force behind watershed events such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the March on Washington, which helped bring about such landmark legislation as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and is remembered each year on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a U.S. federal holiday since 1986.

The Montgomery Bus boycott On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks (1913-2005), secretary of the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People chapter, refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus and was arrested. Activists coordinated a bus boycott that would continue for 381 days, placing a severe economic strain on the public transit system and downtown business owners. They chose Martin Luther King Jr. as the protest’s leader and official spokesman.

SCLC Emboldened by the boycott’s success, in 1957 he and other civil rights activists–most of them fellow ministers–founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a group committed to achieving full equality for African Americans through nonviolence. (Its motto was “Not one hair of one head of one person should be harmed.”) He would remain at the helm of this influential organization until his death.

March on Washington Held on August 28 and attended by some 200,000 to 300,000 participants, the event is widely regarded as a watershed moment in the history of the American civil rights movement and a factor in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 The march culminated in King’s most famous address, known as the “I Have a Dream” speech.

The end On the evening of April 4, 1968, King was fatally shot while standing on the balcony of a motel in Memphis, where he had traveled to support a sanitation workers’ strike. James Earl Ray (1928-1998), an escaped convict and known racist, pleaded guilty to the murder and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. (He later recanted his confession and gained some unlikely advocates, including members of the King family, before his death in 1998.)