#blackhistory: On July 2, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law

In 1964, the work of emancipation remained incomplete throughout much of the United States.

The end of the Civil War had seen a trio of amendments to the Constitution, the 13th in 1865 , the 14th in 1868, and the 15th in 1870, which abolished slavery, broadened the definition of American citizenship, and guaranteed the right the vote to all eligible men. These assertions of black (although still mostly male) equality before the law were epochal but had been neutered for almost a century by systematic disenfranchisement of black voters via literacy tests, poll taxes, and outright violence.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was not the first attempt to address these injustices.

In 1875, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875 or the Enforcement Act, which aimed "to protect all citizens in their civil and legal rights" in the arenas of public transit and public accommodations, as well as jury service. President Ulysses S. Grant signed it into law but found it difficult to enforce as the high tide of Reconstruction receded. It would be ultimately ruled unconstitutional in 1883 by the Supreme Court in an 8-1 vote.

Over the next 80 years, African American activists pursued a multi-pronged strategy of protest and legislative action that encompassed transportation, education and employment.

In 1963, President John F. Kennedy proposed what many see as a capstone to those efforts. Ongoing protests throughout the South had been met by police violence, with television news footage of black men and women being abused for daring to exercise their rights pouring into homes across the country on a nightly basis.  In response, Kennedy proposed a bill that would outlaw discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It faced stiff opposition in Congress, though, particularly from Southern Democrats and seemed fated to languish in committee. Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963, had the unintended consequence of shifting the political calculus around the bill, however. New President, Lyndon B. Johnson, was a master of the legislative arts and explicitly linked the law to his murdered predecessor's legacy, telling a joint session of Congress on November 27, 1963 that, "[n]o memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy's memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long."

Southern Democrats resisted all the same, attaching over 100 poison pill amendments to the Act and filibustering it for 75 days. Democratic Senator of West Virginia and former Klansman Robert Byrd held the floor for 14 hours, while Senator Strom Thurmond (D-SC) fulminated that the "so-called Civil Rights Proposals, which the President has sent to Capitol Hill for enactment into law, are unconstitutional, unnecessary, unwise and extend beyond the realm of reason. This is the worst civil-rights package ever presented to the Congress and is reminiscent of the Reconstruction proposals and actions of the radical Republican Congress."

The 67 votes then needed to end a filibuster were hard to come by, and the most memorable of that number may have come from California's own, Senator Clair Engle - D. Suffering from terminal brain cancer at the time of the "cloture vote on June 10, 1964, Clair Engle was too sick to stand or speak, and he was in his final weeks of life. But he was brought to the Senate floor, and when the clerk read his name, "Mr. Engle—Yay or Nay," to see whether he would vote in favor of cloture, Clair Engle lifted his hand toward his eye, signaling an "Aye" vote. He voted to end the filibuster and enact the historic civil-rights bill."

(image: clair_engle.jpg caption: California Senator Clair Engle - D)

The Senate would vote 73-27 in favor of the bill. When Johnson signed it into law on July 2, 1964, he did using 75 pens, which went to members of Congress and civil rights leaders including Roy Wilkins and Martin Luther King, Jr..  Once the signing was done, Johnson is said to have told an aide, "[i]t is an important gain, but I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come." The exceptional student of American politics was not mistaken. Many of the most rabid segregationists in the Democratic party would become Republicans, Strom Thurmond among them, and their exit would turn the American South into a GOP stronghold. But the exodus would also clear the way for a new class of black Democratic leadership and create a party forever linked to the African American vote.

(image: civilrightsact1964-houserollcall-hr7152.jpg caption: Final roll call vote in the U.S. House of Representatives on H.R. 7152 -- the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Page 1 of voting record. Credit: United States House of Representatives Office of the Clerk - United States National Archives and Records Administration.)