Civil Rights Act of 1964 - Fiftieth Anniversary

When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 one-half Century ago, an African American baby born that year would become the country's first black president.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Others Witness
President Lyndon Johnson
Sign the Civil Rights Act of 1964

Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ten years after Rosa Parks started the Montgomery Bus Boycott, administered by Martin Luther King; and ten years after the U.S. Supreme struck down public segregation in Brown v the Board of Education. 

Then why are we still talking about civil rights, voting rights and equality?

Because these issues still affect American life, making them topics that are still as relevant to American conversation as they were when the civil rights case, named after Linda Brown, a little girl about my age, in 1954, helped to win for African Americans the most sweeping changes in U.S. society since the Civil War. Brown v the Board of Education was decided in May 1954. I was five years old and my mother wondered where I would go to school that next year. Well, she didn't have to wonder long. I went to the same segregated school my older cousins had attended. That Brown decision and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, led by Rosa Parks, made a great deal of difference on the law books, but made no significant difference at the personal level of my life. 

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 sounded great on paper, but how would it translate on the streets where I lived?

After Reconstruction, former slaves had been promised civil rights, the vote and other weapons against the old Slave Code system, which affected slaves, free African Americans and others with too much color, kink, culture divergence, religious difference and language difficulty. Reconstruction Amendments gave rise to another system: Jim Crow laws, perpetuated by organized racist terrorist groups that infiltrated all levels of U.S. government. The vestiges of a society founded upon and soiled by racial violence and injustice that has led us to where we are today, in spite of the convoluted web of  legal struggles this nation has endured. 

My mother always said, "You don't have to love me to be my neighbor, but you do have to give me the respect I have earned." 

Has the Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed one year after Martin Luther King delivered his I Have a Dream Speech, accomplished what was intended? If so, why are so many U.S. citizens isolated in segregated pockets, trapped in virtual slavery in low paying jobs and no health care and sending their children to dangerous inferior places every morning in the name of education? U.S. cities burned to the bone in the 1960s, attributable to racial isolation, virtual slavery, low paying jobs, no health care, dangerous inferior schools, no hope--ignored by conservatives and misunderstood by liberals? I moved to Baltimore in 1971 and saw all the signs of riots not forgotten. Even Los Angeles, California, bears scars of violent unrest during the 1960s.

When Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law on July 2, 1964, I would turn 15 years old in a couple of days and not without political opinions of my own. Although, afraid to be too hopeful about this new turn in American history, I waited along with my opinionated friends in Denver, where I was spending the summer with relatives. My mother sent me away every summer to someplace in the North of West to escape Jim Crow laws. "You have to know there is more to life than segregation," she said.

Custom Search Race relations, poverty and social class here.

Poverty and Social Class

The Greatest Number of Poor People in the United States
Are Not People of Color

Appalachia: America's Forgotten People

Consequently, we are still steeped in deep concentration over the same societal ills and prejudices against those who find themselves and their children being left without adequate food, housing, clothing, preparation for decent jobs and resources to arrive at those jobs. And these conditions have nothing to do with the original purpose of Jim Crow laws, setup after the Civil War to deprive former slaves of the rights they have won. These conditions are centered around poverty and social class.

Vehicle Living

There are homeless families living in broken-down cars and hulled out trailers, and sleeping in boxes under bridges right here in the U.S. Others are living from paycheck to paycheck waiting for a pink slip or an eviction for nonpayment of rent because the money was spend on baby food, milk or cold medicine. Certainly, this is not what Lyndon Johnson meant to happen when he declared war on poverty or what Martin Luther King hoped for in his I Have a Dream Speech.

Vehicle Living

The biggest differences I see are the ever increasing varying shades of poverty. Historically, people of all races have been left behind with poor or no education, prison records, low or no jobs, unsatisfactory shelter that can hardly be called housing far from potential employment and, some cities, no reliable public transportation. 

Substandard Housing

Crowded, Unsanitary & Without Utilities

Just the other day, I saw on my local news a story about substandard housing, a building that called itself an apartment complex that was being held together by single nails and plaster from a can. 

There were no working toilets, no fire alarms or fire escapes, no windows in bedrooms, no garbage pickup, no cars ownership and no grocery stores within walking distance. When discovered, the landlord was told to close the building and the tenants were given notice to leave. Now, they will be homeless. There are so many instances of substandard housing in the United States that they are difficult to track. From inner-cities across the nation to the hills of Appalachia to migrant farms scattered throughout the south and west. Some of the worse substandard housing is occupied by migrant farm workers and their families. These dwellings may as well be in poverty-stricken  third-world nations on the other side of the earth. But they are here at home in the land of more than plenty.

Income, class and social status have been complicating factors in race relations since the beginning of the nation. More associated with race in the past, income, class and social status create the widening gulf in American society today. The have-nots include more than people of color and always have. But today, as in the past, white have-nots have been pitted against people of color to prevent their coalition into a formidable voting block and to deflect attention from those at the top of the political food chain. 

It seems that optimism emerges from the ability to vote, get a job, buy a home, educate the kids and exercise their rights as citizens of the United States. Although there is much to be done in the area of equality, evidence can be seen in public opinion polls that attitudes have changed among nonwhites. "...the gap between whites' and nonwhites' views of where the country stands is wider than at any point in recent history, with nonwhites now almost twice as likely as whites to view the nation's situation positively," according to a recent Gallup poll on race, which indicates that nonwhite Americans are more optimistic about race relations than white Americans.  Tweet

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A little civil rights history may be in order here.

The Civil Rights Act was based on plans drawn up by President John F. Kennedy, who, on June 11, 1963, unveiled his civil rights plan in a nationally speech on the brand new medium that had helped him to get elected over the sweaty, nervous, un-photogenic Richard Nixon. My mother had insisted I watch the debate, which won over some of our Lincoln Republicans neighbors for Kennedy. My mother never turned anyone away when there was a national event. 

"There is no way I can vote for Nixon," said our neighbor, Sugar, who grew a vegetable garden that he shared with anyone who walked past his house. "He looks like a liar," Sugar said. "His whole face is wet and his eyes look like two sunken ant hills between my rows of collard greens." 

My mother said, "They're politicians; they're both liars; all politicians are liars. And Kennedy isn't that good looking." Bigmama said, "But Kennedy is a lot better looking than Nixon." The whole room laughed in agreement, even the kids, especially the girls. "Now everybody be quiet," my mother scolded. "You people are making me miss the debate."

John F. Kennedy Inauguration Speech

We all watched the replay of the JFK speech on evening news--me, my mother, my father and my grandmother. Our tiny living room was also filled with neighbors who did not have televisions sitting in chairs and on the floor in front of the strange little tube projecting from a large wooden box in the corner. "What is that contraption, Bigmama had asked when my mother as she showed the delivery men 

Later, I remember being awed by his inauguration speech. He made me want to go out and do something for my country! And I was only 11 years old. He made me feel that things were going to change because he was now president. It didn't matter that my mother and some of the adults in my life had doubts about his sincerity. 

President John F. Kennedy
Vice President
Lyndon B. Johnson

"Kennedy is afraid of the South," Bigmama said. "That's why he picked Lyndon Johnson for his vice president. Johnson makes him look safe to the bigots down here. That's how he got elected--Johnson got him Texas."

"Everybody with any amount of sense is scared of the South," I heard Sugar tell Bigmama.

"Are you saying Johnson doesn't have any sense?" She asked. 

"Oh, hell no, Johnson's got sense and balls."

"Not in front of the children," Bigmama said. "But I agree."

John F. Kennedy's civil rights speech on June 11, 1963 was one month before my fourteenth birthday and just five months before his assassination. By the time Kennedy gave his civil rights speech, I recalled that most of my life had been spent up to that time waiting and hoping, like many of my ancestors had hoped, for a change in my condition and my future. 

Rosa Parks, who sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, was a hero in our community.

Rosa Parks
Montgomery Bus Boycott

I remember hearing my mother and Bigmama talk about Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott before I started school. I didn't know what the Montgomery Bus Boycott was. And all I know about Rosa Parks was that she was a seamstress like Aunt Lucille. And, like Aunt Lucille, Rosa Parks was so much more than just a seamstress and she and Martin Luther King went to jail fighting something called Jim Crow laws. When I was very young, Bigmama taught me what Jim Crow laws meant in my life. During the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Bigmama thought it was time I knew something about American society.When I was four or five years old, she spelled out on a piece of paper colored and white only and told me what that meant. Tweet

President John F. Kennedy
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy

Memories of President Kennedy's striking image spewing fancy words on national television outlining his plans were burned into the African American psyche and would last through several succeeding generations. Kennedy's plan outlined what became Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 the guts of Johnson's law, which prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance. 

According to some, Kennedy came late and reluctantly into the struggle for the cause of civil rights. However, JFK did come into the discussion in a very public way, not only with lofty speeches, but, with the urging of his attorney general brother, Robert F. Kennedy, and civil rights activist, Martin Luther King, ordering federal troops to protect black demonstrators in the South. To me, although I was young, this meant a new beginning for my people. I watched the police dog and fire hose attacks on school children in Birmingham, Alabama, and I wondered what it would take to make things right in this nation. Maybe Kennedy can do something, I thought.

John F. Kennedy Assassinated

Then, the unthinkable happened, sending the African American Community into mourning as if JFK was a member of our own family. President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, of all places, not 200 miles north of us. Student and teachers had been assembled in the school auditorium to watch this momentous news coverage of the President's visit to Texas, along with his Vice President Lyndon Johnson of Texas, escorted by Texas Governor, John Connally. We were so devastated by the death of President Kennedy and the news media, as well, that there was hardly any word about forgotten Governor Connally, who lay close to death for several days.

Martin Luther Kin, Robert Kennedy, Roy Wilkins
&
President Lyndon Johnson

As hopeless as the situation seemed as we watched non stop coverage of the investigation and then the funeral, it wasn't entirely hopeless. We Still had Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. They would not let everything be lost. Too many lives, black and white, had been lost already--the president's, the four little girls in Birmingham, the three college students in Mississippi and the countless others over a century of civil rights struggle.

There had been lots of speculation about Lyndon Johnson when JFK picked him as his VP. My mother was an observer of American History and current national and local politics through national newspapers, magazines, radio and television news and other TV programming. 

"It was political," she told me. "There are so many deals going on under the table that it would make your head spin and not only in politics, in everything, at my job at your school. You remember that. Most things are not the way they seem.  And that goes for people, too. Like it or not, Johnson is the president, now."

She was right about President Johnson. He was not at all what he seemed. And it wasn't what he said or his lack of mastery of the English language that proved out who he was. It was his deeds. He called in every favor he'd left behind in the Senate, where he had been leader for so many years. He threatened to use sensitive information on politicians he knew. He bullied others. And the played on the sympathy for the late President Kennedy. All of this to get that Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed. Why, you may ask? He seemed to be on a mission to make things right. 

 

Civil Rights Act of 1964 Tweet

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Bigmama Didn’t Shop 

At Woolworth’s 

Sunny Nash

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Sunny Nash

Sunny Nash is an author, producer, photographer and leading writer on U.S. race relations. She writes books, blogs, articles and reviews, and produces media and images on U.S. history and contemporary American topics, ranging from Jim Crow laws to social media networking. Sunny Nash is the author of Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's (Texas A&M University Press), about life with her part-Comanche grandmother during the Civil Rights Movement. 

Sunny Nash’s book is recognized by the Association of American University Presses as essential for understanding U.S. race relations.

Nash's book is also listed in the Bibliographic Guide for black studies at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York; and recommended for Native American collections by the Miami-Dade Public Library System in Florida. Nash uses her book to write articles and blogs on race relations in America through topics relating to her life--from music, film, early radio and television, entertainment, social media, Internet technology, publishing, journalism, sports, education, employment, the military, fashion, performing arts, literature, women's issues, adolescence and childhood, equal rights, social and political movements--past and present—to today's post-racism.

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Martin Luther King on Education - I Have a Dream

Martin Luther King had a dream to destroy Jim Crow.

Martin Luther King, I Have a Dream, Lincoln Memorial

Martin Luther King delivered his I Have a Dream Speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 before an audience of more than two hundred thousand. I Have a Dream was a speech that was developed over many years, starting when Martin Luther King joined the Montgomery Bus Boycott, sparked by Rosa Parks in 1955. 

The I Have a Dream Speech was a culmination of struggles that had been endured by, not just the man--Martin Luther King--but all African Americans. At the heart of the civil rights struggle were several civil rights that African Americans were prevented from enjoying. One of those crucial civil rights being denied by Jim Crow laws was an equal education. In fact, education in the African American community was not only unequal to that of whites, but it was inferior on its own. School supplies were lacking in black schools, teachers were under-trained in many cases and building facilities were without adequate space and even proper lighting and heating.

Martin Luther King - Lincoln University 1961

So, you see, the Civil Rights movement was about more than ridding the American vocabulary of the "N" word. Civil rights were about equal education and equality in all aspect of American life where rights for African Americans and other people of color were systematically denied. 

Equality in society cannot be attained without equal education.

The African American community from the time it was freed from slavery pushed their children to get as much education as possible. It was the belief of the black community that equal rights could only be gained through education. The uneducated, they believed, would always be relegated to unequal circumstances and poverty. 

Many African American families sacrificed to send their children to school and to college. They paid for tuition, textbooks and school supplies with meager earnings as farm workers, domestic help and common laborers. Martin Luther King, however, had advantages of security as a child with a prosperous father to support him and his siblings. In cases, like his, it was understood that the children would attend college. This meant room and board, train or bus transportation and school clothing.

Introduced during slavery, Jim Crow laws and black codes prohibited the instruction of bonded laborers in letters and numbers. Educated slaves, the owners believed, would no longer accept their status and possible would rebel. After emancipation, landowners who controlled sharecroppers in a similar manner as slaves, held the same beliefs. Although it was no longer against the law to educate former slaves, the economic system certainly discouraged their education. Jim Crow schools were designated separate but equal, a concept that had no meaning when it came to equality. Martin Luther King was an educated man who preached education for all. 

Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King arrested for disorderly conduct in Montgomery, Alabama.

Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King
Arrest Photos 1954

In fact, in many areas of the United States, Jim Crow laws did not provide for or require African American children to attend school. Education was thought to pollute the cheap workforce, making laborers desire a better life. Rosa Parks had to walk many miles to school as a child, even passing a white school whose students were bused from home.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott, which was ignited by Rosa Parks in 1954 and lasted for more than a year, hurled Martin Luther King, as a young pastor, into the national arena during. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was not just about maids and janitors getting to work without riding the bus. There were many students involved in the boycott walking miles to school instead of continued to be humiliated on public transportation. This was a movement within the larger Civil Rights Movement and helped energize the growing national struggle against Jim Crow laws. 

Martin Luther King’s Education and Credentials

Martin Luther King was educated when he became a civil rights activist against Jim Crow laws during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, sparked by Rosa Parks.

Martin Luther King &Jim Crow Laws

I watched Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, civil rights and the dismantling of Jim Crow laws unfold on the evening news on television along with every other American household that had a television in their living room.

Martin Luther King - March on Washington &The Dream

See full video of Martin Luther King's 'I Have A Dream,' written after Rosa Parks sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott and ignited the modern Civil Rights Movement against Jim Crow laws.

Martin Luther King: Dream Speech

Read full text of Martin Luther King's 'I Have A Dream,' written after Rosa Parks sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott and ignited the modern Civil Rights Movement against Jim Crow laws.

Sunny Nash

Blogger, Sunny Nash, is a writer, producer, photographer and leading author on race relations in America. 

Sunny Nash produces blogs, media, books, articles and images on history and contemporary topics, from slavery, the Civil War, Jim Crow and civil rights to post racism, social media, entertainment and technology using her book, Bigmama Didn’t Shop At Woolworth’s, as a basis for commentary and research.

Bigmama Didn't Shop 

at Woolworth's

by Sunny Nash
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Sunny Nash's book was selected by the Association of American University Press as a resource for understanding U.S. race relations and recommended for Native American Collections by the Miami-Dade Public Library System.

"My book, 'Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's,' began in the 1990s. I was writing for Hearst and Knight-Ridder newspapers. The stories are about my childhood with my part-Comanche grandmother, Bigmama, my parents, relatives, friends, and others; and my interpretation of the events surrounding the Jim Crow South before and during the Civil Rights Movement.

Robin Fruble of Southern California said, "Every white person in America should read this book! Sunny Nash writes the story of her childhood without preaching or ranting but she made me realize for the first time just how much skin color changes how one experiences the world. But if your skin color is brown, it matters a great deal to a great number of people. I needed to learn that. Sunny Nash is a great teacher," Fruble said.

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First Black Female Olympic Gold, Alice Coachman

Alice Coachman was the first African American female gold medal winner in Olympics history.

Alice Coachman, 1948 High Jump Winner

Track and Field

Alice Coachman 

Alice Coachman won a gold medal at the 1948 Olympics, becoming the first black American woman to win gold, just days after Audrey Patterson became the first African American woman to win a medal of any kind in the Olympics.

Alice Coachman, 1948 London Olympics High Jump Winner

1948 U.S. Female Olympic Track & Field

The last Olympics held before World War II was in Berlin 1936. Black male track and field star, Jesse Owens, who won four gold track and field medals and tried to turn his victory into a victory for civil rights. In spite of Jesse Owens' impressive results, race relations in the United States remained oppressive.

Nearly two decades would pass before Brown v the Board of Education in 1954 and the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1954-55, led by Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, would cause changes in federal law would remove Jim Crow law from the nation's books. However, it takes more than the stroke of a pen to remove racism from society.

Historical background- Females in the Olympics

Black women in that 1936 Olympics, Tydie Pickett and Louise Stokes, had been removed from the track and field roster as they had been in the Los Angeles Olympics in 1932. They were replaced by white teammates they had previously defeated. Because the world was involved in WWII, the Olympics were cancelled in 1940 and 1944. The next Olympics were held in 1948 in London, in which African American women track and field stars, comprising the greater proportion of the 1948 U.S. Female Olympic Track and Field Team, set records that year and won medals.

Since 1948, black female gold medal Olympians--from Coachman, the first, to Gabby Douglas in the 2012 London Olympics, most recent of the African American female gold medal winners--have been making Olympic history and showing the world who they were. Each occasion that black women win medals or make other significant accomplishments to society, the world sees African American women in a different and more positive light, and re-evaluates changing standards of American beauty.

Athletics and civil rights helped set new standards of American beauty. Beauty standards of have changed along with images of black women. 

Rosa Parks & Martin Luther King
Montgomery Bus Boycott

The image of black female beauty ushered in by the Civil Rights Movement was very different from the old images of black women during the days of Jim Crow laws. 

During the days of Jim Crow laws, women with darker skin were considered less attractive than women with lighter skin. And that was true even in the African American community. Therefore, dark-skinned women were viewed on television shows and in Hollywood movies as less valuable in society than their white counterparts. And black women with light skin remained out of work because producers hesitated in casting them as maids and risking a confusion that white women were playing roles as maids. In other words the roles the public saw black and white women playing were the reflection of the public estimation of them in real life. 

The Olympics helped to show black women as winners, raised their value in society and opened the door for Rosa Parks, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Martin Luther King and the modern Civil Rights Movement. Early accomplishments, victories and contributions by Alice Coachman and others laid the foundation for a future generation of black female activists like Rosa Parks to continue building a road to equality. The Civil Rights Movement seized upon Alice Coachman's glory in hopes of creating another African American hero to symbolize racial equality and close the door on the black codes of slavery that created Jim Crow laws and racial injustice in American society. 

By nearly a decade, Alice Coachman's era preceded Rosa Parks, the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Dr. Martin Luther King, both credited with igniting the modern Civil Rights Movement. King, Parks and a little known female civil rights activist named Joanne Robinson worked to hold the Montgomery Bus Boycott together. However, Alice Coachman's victory at the 1948 Olympics had opened doors toward racial justice, which made the efforts of King, Parks, Robinson and other civil rights activists. 

Alice Coachman represented Tuskegee Institute, the school that started women's track and field training for the Olympics, and became the first African American woman to win a gold medal in the Olympics. In fact, Coachman was the only U.S. female athlete of any race to win a medal of any kind at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. Alice Coachman, other participants in the Olympics and the rest of the African Americans in the United States wanted the same things as other Americans. They wanted a chance to be Americans. They wanted good jobs, homes and education for their children. And that's what winning in the Olympics, attending Tuskegee Institute and other universities, and the Civil Rights Movement meant to them.

Alice Coachman
High Jump Winner (AP Photo)

Alice Coachman--born in 1923 in Albany, Georgia--was one of 10 children. She attended Tuskegee Institute in high school and college at the time of Tuskegee Airmen fame. At Tuskegee, Coachman won several national track and field titles, but due to World War II, the 1940 and 1944 Olympics were cancelled. Before Alice Coachman won her gold medal, Audrey Patterson of Tennessee State had already won a bronze medal, becoming the first African American female in Olympic history to win a medal.

Alice Coachman (center) at Wembley Stadium, Wembley, England, August 7, 1948, London Olympics, receiving gold medal for winning the women's high jump; left is D.J. Tyler, Great Britain, second; and right is M.O.M. Ostermeyer, France, third.

Athletics and civil rights helped to change America.

A. Philip Randolph 

Eleanor Roosevelt

National unrest and growing racial and social tension in the military community, led by A. Philip Randolph, brought civil rights to the forefront of the Roosevelt administration, primarily through sympathies of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, leading to the creation of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first black U.S. trained black pilots, who helped America win WWII and were instrumental in the desegregation of the U.S. Army. On July 26, 1948, the President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981 to desegregate the U.S. Army, just days before the London Olympics began on July 29, 1948 and Coachman's victory for the gold medal in the high jump.

Alice Coachman's victory fueled the struggle against Jim Crow laws in America and the world.

President Truman & African American Female Olympians

(l-r) Emma Reed, Theresa Manuel, Audrey Patterson,

Nell Jackson, Alice Coachman and Mabel Walker

(l-r) Emma Reed, Theresa Manuel, Audrey Patterson,

Nell Jackson, Alice Coachman and Mabel Walker

After returning from London in 1948 and hanging up her Olympic shoes, Alice Coachman became a symbol of freedom to many African Americans who heard on radio that Coachman was inducted into eight athletic Halls of Fame. These are honors no black women before her had ever earned. Since that time, many black women had earned these and additional Olympic and other honors. 

Alice Coachman opened the door for the fastest woman in the world in 1960, Wilma Rudolph, until Florence "FloJo" Joyner broke her record in 1988, becoming the fastest woman on earth.

After winning her world honors, she founded the Alice Coachman Track and Field Foundation, a non-profit organization to help train young athletes for Olympic competition, to find funds for their college education and to prepare for professional careers after returning from the Olympics.