Historic Filibuster Ends – Path Cleared for 1964 Civil Rights Act
A coalition of Democrats and liberal Republican Senators on this day voted for a cloture motion shutting off debate and ending the filibuster that had prevented action on the Civil Rights Bill pending before the Senate. Cloture required 67 votes, but the actual vote was 71–29.
The civil rights bill before Congress in the spring of 1964 was almost certain to pass, but southern segregationists resorted to their only remaining weapon, a filibuster, to in their minds block its passage. The filibuster that began on March 30, 1964 paralyzed the Senate for 57 working days.
The civil rights bill quickly passed both houses of Congress and President Lyndon Johnson signed the historic 1964 Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act is one of the most important pieces of social legislation in American history, ending long-established discriminatory practices. Title II outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in places of public accommodation: lunch counters, restaurants, hotels, and so on. (Small businesses, however, were exempted from the law.) Title II had the effect of ending the historic racial segregation in public accommodations that had prevailed in the South in the Jim Crow years. Title VII outlawed discrimination in employment based on race, color, religion sex, or national origin. Title VII ended discriminatory practices that existed across the entire United States. (Small employers were exempted from the law.) On June 19, 1986 the Supreme Court ruled that sexual harassment was discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
HISTORICAL NOTE ON FILIBUSTERS: In the 1960s, senators had to actually speak continuously to maintain a filibuster. In recent years, as a result of Senate rules changes, senators only have to say they are going to filibuster and a bill is blocked from consideration.
Read: Todd Purdom, An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties, and the Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (2014)
Read about President Lyndon Johnson and the 1964 Civil Rights bill: Robert Caro, The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (2012)
Learn about the history of the filibuster: http://www.brookings.edu/research/testimony/2010/04/22-filibuster-binder
Learn more about the Senate and the filibuster: Sarah A. Binder and Steven S. Smith, Politics or Principle?: Filibustering in the United States Senate (1997)
Visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture here