Civil Rights Dbq

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a needed and huge step in the evolution of equal rights provided in the Constitution. It was a most important protest movement and produced some greatest leader such as Rosa Park, Martin Luther King Jr. and Thurgood Marshall. As Martin Luther King Jr. inferred that the Declaration of Independence “has always represented a ‘declaration of intent rather than reality’” (Hall), the reality of the times was such that only few blacks enjoyed the rights guaranteed to them. This was an evident in the growing civil rights movement that began in the early 1960s. The media at the time played an influential and important part in conveying the need for government intervention, especially the visual reports of unarmed

The 1964 Republican Presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater not only believed the Civil Rights Act infringed on the ability of businesses to hire whomever they chose but also would require the federal police to secure the rights of the Act. A religious leader from Florida testifying before Congress claimed “… that Federal efforts to force integration as a new social pattern is morally wrong, un-Christian and in conflict with word and will of God….” (Landsberg). The opposition was summed up by the three-month filibuster headed by

The month before the Act passed three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi were murdered, amplifying the adversity of the time and the feeling that a governmental forced equality would only cause more division within the social structure of the country. While opposition to forced integration was expected and did indeed take place, compliance with the Act took place in some areas more quickly than others. Since the majority of the protests and sit-ins occurred in places of public accommodations the government used inventive enforcement by using the Commerce Clause of the Constitution to by-pass the state induced action of the 14th Amendment regarding the private discrimination in public accommodations as interpreted by the Supreme Court in the Civil Rights Cases. Despite much debate by constitutional scholars, the Administration, in the long run, used the Commerce Clause to attack discrimination in public accommodations that did business in some manner across state lines (Landsberg). This could be attracting customers who traveled across state lines as in the landmark Heart of Atlanta v. U.S. and Katzenbach v. McClung (Hall) where a restaurant received its food supplies from out of