Civil Rights Act Of 1957
The Civil Rights Act of 1957, Pub.L. 85-315, 71 Stat. 634, enacted September 9, 1957, primarily a voting rights bill, was the first civil rights legislation enacted by Congress in the United States since Reconstruction following the American Civil War.
Following the historic US Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which eventually led to the integration of public schools, Southern whites in Virginia began a "Massive Resistance". Violence against blacks rose there and in other states, as in Little Rock, Arkansas, where that year President Dwight D. Eisenhower had ordered in federal troops to protect nine children integrating a public school, the first time the federal government had sent troops to the South since Reconstruction. There had been continued physical assaults against suspected activists and bombings of schools and churches in the South. The administration of Eisenhower proposed legislation to protect the right to vote by African Americans.
Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, an ardent segregationist, sustained the longest one-person filibuster in history in an attempt to keep the bill from becoming law. His one-man filibuster lasted 24 hours and 18 minutes; he began with readings of every state's election laws in alphabetical order. Thurmond later read from the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and George Washington's Farewell Address. His speech set the record for a Senate filibuster. The bill passed the House with a vote of 270 to 97 and the Senate 60 to 15. President Eisenhower signed it on September 9, 1957.
Read more about Civil Rights Act Of 1957: Content and Passage, Aftermath, Filibuster, Subsequent Legislation, Sources
Famous quotes containing the words civil rights, civil, rights and/or act:
“There are those who say to you—we are rushing this issue of civil rights. I say we are 172 years late.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)
“We have heard all of our lives how, after the Civil War was over, the South went back to straighten itself out and make a living again. It was for many years a voiceless part of the government. The balance of power moved away from it—to the north and the east. The problems of the north and the east became the big problem of the country and nobody paid much attention to the economic unbalance the South had left as its only choice.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“The respect for human rights is one of the most significant advantages of a free and democratic nation in the peaceful struggle for influence, and we should use this good weapon as effectively as possible.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“You are as still as a yardstick. You have a doll’s kiss.
The brain whirls in a fit. The brain is not evident.
I have gone to that same place without a germ or a stroke.
A little solo act that lady with the brain that broke.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)