Cival Rights Act 1964
When the Government Stood Up For Civil Rights "All my life I've been sick and tired, and now I'm just sick and tired of being sick and tired. No one can honestly say Negroes are satisfied. We've only been patient, but how much more patience can we have?" Mrs. Hamer said these words in 1964, a month and a day before the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 would be signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. She speaks for the mood of a race, a race that for centuries has built the nation of America, literally, with blood, sweat, and passive acceptance. She speaks for black Americans who have been second class citizens in their own home too long. She speaks for the race that would be patient no longer that would be accepting no more. Mrs. Hamer speaks for the African Americans who stood up in the 1950's and refused to sit down. They were the people who led the greatest movement in modern American history - the civil rights movement. It was a movement that would be more than a fragment of history, it was a movement that would become a measure of our lives (Shipler 12). When Martin Luther King Jr. stirred up the conscience of a nation, he gave voice to a long lain dormant morality in America, a voice that the government
After fighting the Germans and witnessing Hitler's racial holocaust blacks realized the inequality at home even more. It was an idea that started with President Kennedy, and after his assassination the civil rights groups had to face the question of whether legislative strategies would be the same under the new President, but President Johnson saw them through (Watters 119). The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the concrete action the movement needed to progress on to other key legislation. It gave heart to the fighters, that the government was at a last seeing the new way, the right way. Title VII establishes a government agency, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), to enforce the provisions that prohibits discrimination by employers dealing with the federal government or interstate commerce (Ash 797). " The education provided to blacks proved to be, "manifestly unequal by every yardstick," and blacks, impeded in education, proved to summer in almost every other area as a result. Black civil Rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. Johnson, Kennedy's successor, has stepped in to keeps the legislative wheels turning. Groups rushed to point out the deficiencies in the Act. Around the middle of the century gains were being made in small places, with a few minor changes in state laws. " The Nation 3 February 1964: 117-120 Word Count: 2033. Works CitedAsh, Philip. This decision allowed white Southern conservative leadership to make laws and policies regarding blacks that eluded constitutional guarantees.
Common topics in this essay:
Rights Act,
Supreme Court,
Board Education,
Joseph Clark,
Civil Rights,
NUL NAACP,
Title VII,
civil rights,
Johnson Watters,
War II,
Lyndon Johnson,
rights act,
civil rights act,
act 1964,
rights act 1964,
supreme court,
luther king jr,
king jr,
warren court,
interstate commerce,
martin luther king,
lyndon johnson,
civil rights movement,
martin luther,
sick tired,
|
Acceptance Essays
