1. BIRMINGHAM AS THE CATALYST, AND CHRONOLOGY

As I have said several times now, Birmingham was the catalyst that pushed John Kennedy to send a civil rights bill to the Congress in June 1963. Before Birmingham many people indulged the comfortable idea that if one gave the South enough time, it would eventually see the error of its ways and voluntarily end segregation on its own. However Bull Connor single-handedly convinced millions of people that a system that was so brutal and depraved that it would turn police dogs on innocent children would NEVER change on its own. It would only change if it were FORCED to change. Most of the nation was outraged by what Bull Connor did. His behavior ignited a firestorm of criticism, and indignation, and REVULSION (revulsion is the emotion that people feel when they are revolted by something gross: think of raw sewage). All over the country white people explained that they did not condone what Bull Connor had done, and sought to distance themselves from his example. Bull Connor generated an equal and opposite reaction, in which many Americans now believed firmly that it was absolutely necessary for the Federal Government to use its power to FORCE the South to end segregation, and obey the Brown decision, immediately. This was the revolution in public opinion that the civil rights movement had been trying to achieve for 9 years (since Brown, 1954) and since the founding of the NAACP in 1909.

In August the March on Washington was held, and it became a massive lobbying campaign to put pressure on the Congress to pass the civil rights bill. They didn't have a march just to have a march. The political purpose of the March on Washington was to exert pressure on the Congress to pass the civil rights bill. It was a lobbying effort. More than 250,000 people gathered in Washington to urge Congress to pass a bill ending segregation in the public schools, in places of public accommodation; and to end discrimination on the basis of race in employment. The massive turnout was impressive, and historic.

16TH STREET BAPTIST CHURCH

On September 15, 1963 the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham was firebombed, by former members of the Ku Klux Klan and this was the infamous incident in which four teenage girls attending Sunday school were killed. Their names were Denise McNair (11), Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins (all age 14). The cause of desegregation was paid for with their blood and that of other martyrs. It would be decades before the ex-Klansmen responsible for the murders were brought to justice. But the death of these children showed the world yet again that the system of white supremacy in the South was a monstrous system that would even murder children. The murder of these children revealed the domestic terrorism that Afro-Americans faced everyday.

Today we know that at least four men were involved in the bombing. One was a disgruntled former Klansman who left the KKK because he felt it was not doing enough to counter attack against Afro-American activism. The former Klansman is Thomas Blanton. After the bombing, the FBI planted hidden microphones in Blanton's apartment, and taped his conversations with Mitchell Burns. Burns was a Klansman-turned-FBI informant (human intelligence). On one tape Blanton said "I am going to stick to bombing churches." On another he described himself as a clean-cut guy: "I like to go shooting. I like to go fishing. I like to go bombing."

Another suspect, Robert "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss was convicted of murder in 1977 and died in prison in 1985. Suspect Herman Cash died before he was charged. Blanton was charged in 2000, and im May 2001 a jury of 8 Euro-Americans and 4 Afro-Americans found him guilty of murder. The fourth co-conspirator, Bobby Frank Cherry, was found by Judge Garrett to be not mentally competent to assist his attorneys at that time. In early 2002 Cherry was found competent, and a trial is now underway. Chris McNair, the father of Denise McNair, is now a commissioner in Jefferson County, Alabama.

KENNEDY ASSASSINATION, LBJ SUCCESSION

In November 1963 John Kennedy was assassinated, and Lyndon Johnson succeeded to the presidency. Johnson was a Southerner, from east Texas. He had grown up with racism and knew it first hand. But his father had been a Populist, and Johnson was a New Deal Democrat. He was a Southern moderate. And he had been the Majority Leader of the Senate. Johnson appealed to the Congress to pass the civil rights bill as a memorial, as a tribute, to the martyred John Kennedy. In a sense he appealed to the sense of grief and indeed guilt that the nation felt over the assassination. Johnson insisted that civil rights was the cause for which Kennedy had given his life. To vote against the civil rights bill was to betray the legacy of John Kennedy. It was almost to spit or throw mud on the memory of the beloved president. To be against the bill was to be against Kennedy. This was a shrewd psychological and political ploy.

MALCOLM X SILENCED

Malcolm X saw things differently. Elijah Muhammad explicitly ordered his ministers not to make any public comment about the assassination. But Malcolm disobeyed.  He accepted questions from reporters, and when asked he replied that Kennedy had done next to nothing to protect the Freedom Riders from violence. He had done nothing to protect black children from being bitten by dogs at the hands of white racists. He had done nothing about the murder of 4 black children at the 16^th Street Baptist Church. Now, Malcolm said, the violence that Kennedy had done nothing to check had claimed Kennedy’s life too. It was like a boomerang. And Malcolm pointed out that the US Government had engaged in plots to assassinate foreign leaders, such as Patrice Lumumba of the Congo. It was, he said, like "chickens coming home to roost." The media made it seem as if Malcolm had rejoiced that JFK was killed, and the Nation of Islam was embarrassed by the adverse publicity. Elijah Muhammad said that the statement was ill-timed, and the words were not well chosen. He said that Malcolm had been speaking only for himself, not for the Nation. The Nation Of Islam silenced Malcolm X for 90 days. In March 1964, Malcolm broke with the Nation, and stepped out on his own.

THE 24TH AMENDMENT

In February 1964 the 24th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified by 3/4ths of the states.

It said "The right of citizens of the U.S. to vote in any primary or other election for president or vice president, or for senator or representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or any other tax."

This began to chip away at disfranchisement around the edges by attacking the poll tax. But the Amendment did not apply to purely state and local elections.

COMPLETING PASSAGE OF THE KENNEDY CIVIL RIGHTS BILL

It was Lyndon Johnson who saw Kennedy's civil rights bill through to completion and successful passage by the Congress. The purpose of the civil rights bill was to end official, state-sponsored, de jure racial segregation in public accommodations.

Johnson himself invoked the legacy of John Kennedy. He said that we must pass this bill as a tribute to the slain and martyred president. This was the cause for which he had given his life, and the nation must complete the work begun by its beloved leader. Not to support the civil rights bill was to betray and throw mud on the memory of John Kennedy.

 In his November 27th address to the Congress Johnson said,

"no memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy's memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long. We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. We have talked for one hundred years or more. It is time now to write the next chapter, and to write it in the books of law. (Schulman, p. 171).

Historian Bruce Schulman writes, "Johnson shrewdly and ruthlessly exploited the nation's grief over its fallen hero, so that a dead Kennedy, martyred by an assassin's bullet, proved far more effective than the living one could ever have hoped to be" (p. 75). Many historians suggest that Kennedy became in death what he had never been in life.

In January 1964 Johnson met with black civil rights leaders to emphasize his commitment to passage of the bill. A photograph (on p. 72 of Schulman) shows Johnson with Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, James Farmer of CORE, Martin Luther King, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference or SCLC, and Whitney Young of the National Urban League. SNCC, which had been critical of the Kennedy administration,  is conspicuously absent.

Johnson felt that he was in Kennedy's shadow. He felt that he had a lot to prove. He had voted against almost every civil rights proposal while he had been in Congress. He wanted to prove that he was not just another redneck Southerner, but a national statesman--the greatest president there ever had been. He said that he would finish what Lincoln had started. He told Richard Russell of GA, the leader of the Southern Democrats in the Senate, that he was determined to get the civil rights bill passed. Russell replied (to paraphrase) Mr. President, you may pass the bill. But it will cost you the South. And it will cost you an election [referring to the election of 1964].

Liberals of both parties pushed the bill through the House of Representatives in February 1964. It passed 290-130, with 152 Democrats and 138 Republicans voting in favor. Voting against were 96 Democrats (mostly Southerners) and 34 Republicans (Muse, p. 87).

Howard Smith of Virginia wanted to sabotage the bill, so he tried to make it "absurd." He suggested that it say that not only could there not be discrimination on the basis of race and national origin, but that there could be no discrimination on the basis of sex either. In the climate of 1964, many people feared that the Congress would not support such a radical proposal. However the proposal backfired. The five female members of the House demanded that the language be retained (Whalens, Longest Debate, p. 118). The civil rights community realized that it would be utterly hypocritical to condemn discrimination in employment on the basis of race and national origin, but say it was okay to discriminate against women on the basis of gender. Therefore liberals embraced the anti-discrimination provisions that applied to gender. Now the bill would ban discrimination on the basis of race, national origin and sex.

In addition, a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee had also amended the original Kennedy bill to strengthen it. The subcommittee, chaired by Congressman Peter Rodino (Italian) of New Jersey, added new provisions to the bill. Rodino's subcommittee proposed that the  Equal Employment Opportunity Commission be given the power to investigate any US firm with 25 or more employees, on charges of discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion and national origin. After a hearing, the EEOC would have the power to ORDER that discriminatory practices stop.

Furthermore, a section called Equal Employment Opportunity prohibited discrimination by ANY firm with 25 or more employees, on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin (and sex, per Smith amendment), in hiring and the classification of workers. This was significant because it applied to ALL firms (with more than 25 employees) engaged in interstate commerce, NOT ONLY THOSE FIRMS THAT RECEIVED FEDERAL CONTRACTS. This was the most controversial or far-reaching provision of the bill (Whalens, The Longest Debate, p. 35.
 

FILIBUSTER IN THE SENATE

But the bill faced a certain filibuster by Southern Democrats in the Senate. In a filibuster you continue to debate forever to prevent the bill from coming to a vote, and in this way you kill it (talk it to death). There were 65 Democrats in the Senate and 35 Republicans. Liberals could count on only 42 Democrats to vote for cloture, and it would take 67 votes (or two-thirds of 100) to invoke cloture and shut off debate and bring the bill to a vote. Never before in the history of the Republic had a motion of cloture to break a filibuster on a civil rights bill  succeeded. Johnson realized that the filibuster could only be ended, and the bill could only pass, if he got the support of moderate Republicans. He would need the help of 25 of the 35 Republicans in the Senate to get the necessary 67 votes to invoke cloture. Therefore it became crucial to win the support of the distinguished Republican Minority Leader, Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois.

First, the Senate Majority Leader (Irishman Mike Mansfield of Montana) took the unusual step of retaining direct control of the bill,  and did NOT send it to the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by James Eastland of Mississippi.

Johnson awarded federal projects to Dirksen's home state of Illinois and gave judgeships to Dirksen buddies and nominees. He gave patronage to Republicans who would support the administration.

Debate in the Senate began on March 30th, 1964. Southern opponents, as expected, filibustered for nearly two months. Some 560 amendments to the bill were offered (Muse, p. 89). On May 5, 1964 Dirksen met with Robert Kennedy for the first of a series of meetings designed to spell out the amendments he would require as the price of his support. Allen Matusow says (p. 95) "The ritual of doubt, agonizing appraisal, and eventual conversion that Dirksen had so publicly enacted had merely been contrived to make it easier for other Republicans to join him in voting to close debate and enact the bill. Quoting Victor Hugo, Dirksen said "No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come." (Matusow, p. 95, fn 170).

THE POLITICS OF PASSING THE CIVIL RIGHTS BILL

LBJ understood that in order to get the Congress to pass the civil rights bill it was not enough to have a good or just cause. It was not enough for civil rights to be a moral issue. Johnson in essence employed the power of the presidency to get Congress to pass the bill. He told congressmen, I know there's a project you want in your district. You want a military base or a new bridge or a dam or a post office or money for new highways or a new hospital that will make you look good and make your constituents happy. But if you don't play ball with me, and give me what I want, by voting for this bill, you aren't going to get that new school or hospital or dam or bridge or money for highways. Many people voted for the bill because they genuinely believed in the moral issue involved and because it was the right thing. But "the right thing" was not enough to produce 67 votes for cloture. Some Senators had other, less idealistic motives, and  voted for it because of the political deals. In some cases, people do the right thing for the wrong reason.

On March 27, 1964 there was an earthquake in Alaska, and 115 people were killed. LBJ asked Congress for $50 million  in emergency aid, and $22.5 million in transitional grants (not loans) for Alaska. The senators from Alaska, Ernest Gruening (Dem) and E.L. Bartlett (Dem)  were grateful. This helped LBJ to win them over. They felt indebted to him. This is not to say that without these funds that the senators would not have supported cloture. But it helped the process along. Senator  Carl Hayden (Dem) from Arizona  had been trying for 16 years (since 1948) to get Congress to approve funding for the Central Arizona Water Project. It was a plan to build a system of dams and aqueducts to pipe water from the mountains of California to Phoenix and Tucson, in Arizona. LBJ suggested that if the senator voted with the administration, the administration would see to it that he got his water project. Senator Hayden opposed cloture, on principle, because he felt it was wrong to shut off freedom of speech. But he supported the bill itself, and indicated that he would vote for it. Further, he secretly told Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield that if his vote was needed to invoke cloture, he would cast a vote for cloture, but if the administration could get 67 votes without him he would not vote for cloture. The point is that LBJ had an "extra" vote if it was needed. LBJ would get the support from Hayden, including a vote for cloture if it were needed, and Hayden would get his water project (The Whalens, The Longest Debate, p. 176).

LBJ knew what every member of the Senate wanted. And no one was a better horse trader than he was. LBJ and his lieutenants lined up the votes, and LBJ wanted to prove how liberal he was (he had a Southern redneck reputation to disprove) so he refused to compromise, to water down the bill or dilute it. He did not want anyone to be able to say that the bill that he pushed through the Congress was not as good as a bill that JFK would have produced if he had lived.

TRIUMPH IN THE SENATE

The filibuster went on for nearly two months, and brought the Senate to a near halt. But on June 10^th, 1964, 44 liberal and moderate Democrats and 27 Republicans joined to end debate. The Senate voted 71-29 for cloture, to shut off debate. The 29 opposing votes consisted of 21 Southern and Border state Democrats, 2 other Democrats (one from Nevada), and 6 Republicans from the South (John Tower of Texas) and West (states such as Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico) (Muse, p. 91). Voting against cloture were the Senators of ALAbama, ARK,  FL, GA, LA, MISSISSIPPI, NC, SC, TN; Republican John Tower of TX; Republican Wallace Bennett of UTAH; the senators from VA and WV; Republican Simpson of WYOMING; and Republicans Mechem of NEW MEX. and Barry Goldwater of ARIZONA. Goldwater said that he personally did not favor segregation, but he thought it was a matter of states rights and the Federal Government could not interfere or intrude. Goldwater would become the Republican presidential nominee later that summer (1964). The senators from Missouri, Kentucky and Oklahoma, usually thought of as Border States, voted for cloture

On June 19, 1964 the Senate voted 73-27 to pass the civil rights bill. There was a separate vote on Title VII, equal employment, banning discrimination on the basis of race, sex and national origin in employment. This measure had the least consensus. Opponents (Sam Ervin of NC) introduced a motion to delete this section. The Senate voted 47 in favor of deletion, 51 against deletion. The section remained in the final bill by a margin of ONLY FOUR VOTES!

However the Senate version of the entire bill differed slightly from the House version. The difference was a technicality, to allow complaints of discrimination to first be heard by local and state agencies rather than going immediately to the EEOC. The Republicans did not want to just sweep aside the measures by individual states dealing with discrimination in employment or public accommodations. The House of Representatives now had to vote on whether to accept the modified version of the bill just adopted by the Senate. On July 2, 1964 the House of Representatives voted 289-126 in favor of accepting the revised Senate version of the bill. Thereafter Lyndon Johnson signed the most sweeping and historic civil rights bill since Reconstruction. Rosa Parks was among those invited to the White House for the signing ceremony.
 

CONTENT OF THE BILL

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the most sweeping civil rights legislation in over 100 years, maybe ever.

There were 11 major sections or titles to the bill.

Effective immediately, Title II banned discrimination in all places of public accommodation, meaning hotels, restaurants, conveyances, water fountains, restrooms. This repudiated the old 1996 Plessy ruling, and reinforced in federal law the Supreme Court's Brown decision of 1954. Now there was an actual federal law, a statute, against racial segregation. This would affect the entire nation. Now if one practiced segregation in a public accommodation that person would be violating federal law. This was the end of legal, state-sponsored, compulsory segregation.

The bill said "All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of all the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section,, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin." Establishments which serve the public are places of public accommodation if they affect commerce or if discrimination or segregation by them is supported by state action. This included any inn, hotel, motel, or any other establishment that provides lodging of transient guests (other than an establishment of not more than five rooms for rent or hire which is actually occupied by the proprietor as his residence). This included any restaurant, cafeteria, lunchroom, lunch counter, soda fountain or other facility principally engaged in selling food for consumption, or any facility located on the premises of any retail establishment or any gasoline station.

This included any motion picture house, theater, concert hall, sports arena, stadium or other place of exhibition or entertainment. (Notice that basically this is the Civil Rights Act of 1875, authored by Charles Sumner, all over again. This is history repeating itself, going around in a circle: The public accommodations portion of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 repeats 1875).

Title III called for the de-segregation of public facilities (such as parks, recreation centers, pools) that were owned or operated by states or localities. It also authorized the Attorney General to initiate suits against states and localities that did not comply.

Title IV banned discrimination in public education. This included public colleges, vocational schools, training institutes. It also authorized the Attorney General of the U.S. to file lawsuits seeking to compel de-segregation of public schools and colleges. Previously the burden of bringing suit had fallen on the individual parents. They had to bear the cost and risk the retaliation. Now the Attorney General was specifically empowered to do it.

Title V extended the Civil Rights Commission.

Title VI was called Non-Discrimination in Federally Assisted Programs. It banned discrimination in any program which received federal funds. The penalty for discrimination would be the cut off of federal funding. This put real teeth into the Act, because most states and counties received federal funds for everything from farm programs to spraying for mosquitoes to building or repairing roads to training police. It also affected companies that received federal contracts, including funds for defense and research. Title VI even specified that "white" and "Colored" signs were illegal; separate facilities for withdrawing library books were illegal; separate hours for each race for using the hospital recreation rooms were illegal. All of these things had existed in the South.

Title VII was called Equal Employment Opportunity. It banned discrimination in businesses and in labor unions on the basis of race, color, sex, religion and national origin. This covered hiring, firing, compensation, terms of employment, or privileges of employment. This would be phased in over 4 years. The schedule was:

July 1965 businesses with 100 or more workers
July 1966 " 75 "
July 1967 " 50 "
July 1968 " 25 "

The actual text said "It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex or national origin; or to limit, segregate, or classify his employees in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." (Notice it omits age, handicap or sexual orientation).

Further, "It shall be an unlawful employment practice for a labor organization to exclude or to expel from its membership, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual because of his race, color, religion, sex or national origin;...or to cause or attempt to cause an employer to discriminate against an individual in violation of this section...."

This was crucially important because even in the North there were unions that formally excluded blacks. In Philadelphia, for example, the construction trades were notorious for excluding blacks from the unions and from apprenticeship and training programs. And if you didn't get an apprenticeship, or training, you weren't "qualified." Not until 1964 did this exclusionary practice become illegal. Furthermore, the tests for admission to some apprenticeship programs were oral, not written. So there was no record of what questions had been asked or what answers had been given! And even after 1964 some unions still continued the practice of exclusion by informal means (ten extra points for sons of union members, use of an oral interview that counted for 25% of the score).

This section also established the EEOC, with power to investigate complaints of discrimination and recommend suggested remedies. Complaints were to be taken to local and state agencies, in those states and localities that had agencies for addressing such complaints, FIRST. Typically these were local or state Human Relations Commissions. If one of the parties was not satisfied with what the state or local anti-discrimination agency had recommended, they could then go to the EEOC. If the employer or employee was not satisfied, or both could not agree VOLUNTARILY to accept the EEOC recommendation (within 60 days from the time the EEOC issued its recommendation), they could then sue in federal court.

Title I of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 also attempted to address the problem of disfranchisement in two ways. First, it stated in federal law that a sixth grade education constituted presumptive evidence of literacy. As long as a person could show that he or she had completed the sixth grade the registrar, by law, was SUPPOSED to register the applicant for federal (Congressional and presidential) elections. Secondly, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 required that all literacy tests must be in writing. No longer could they be verbal. This was supposed to reduce the arbitrary and subjective nature of oral tests. Many people confuse these provisions with the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

However these provisions in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were of little use in Mississippi. In 1960  Mississippi had amended the state constitution to provide for a "good character" or moral character test. All voters had to be of good moral character, as determined by the local county registrar. If the registrar did not feel that you were of good moral character then he could refuse to register you. Few Afro-Americans in Mississippi were deemed to be of "good moral character" by white supremacists.
 

 THE LEGAL RATIONALE BEHIND THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964

The prohibition of segregation in public accommodations was an attempt to take the Brown decision of the Supreme Court, from 1954, and write it as federal law or statute. The Court held segregation in the public schools to be unconstitutional because it violated the 14th Amendment, which guarantees to all citizens the equal protection of the law. The Supreme Court in the Brown case said, in essence, that distinctions on the basis of race have no place in a society that treats all of its citizens as equal. To maintain separate racial facilities and public schools, by state and local law, is to make distinctions on the basis of race and is not equal treatment. Recall that President Kennedy, in his televised address announcing the civil rights bill, had said that race has no place in American public life. This was the liberal vision of a colorblind or race neutral society. Recall, too, Martin Luther King, Jr., at the March on Washington, saying that he dreamed of a day when people would be judged by the "content of their character and not by the color of their skin." This was a vision of an American society "beyond race."

Pursuant to the Brown decision, the Civil Rights Act declared state-sponsored racial segregation in the public schools to be illegal. Further, with respect to the Brown precedent, if racial segregation in the public schools was unconstitutional, how could it be proper elsewhere? How could it be unconstitutional to have separate schools by race, but okay to have separate cars on the trains, separate water fountains, separate restrooms, separate waiting rooms and so on? Obviously it couldn't. Therefore the contradiction had to be addressed. The inconsistency had to be resolved. So the Civil Rights Act of 1964 declared that, effective immediately, racial segregation in all public accommodations was now illegal.

Further, the Constitution gives Congress and the federal government jurisdiction over interstate commerce. Therefore the federal government could regulate all businesses, corporations and enterprises that engaged in interstate commerce. For this reason the federal government could tell businesses and unions to stop racial and gender discrimination in hiring. And from the Nineteen Forties the Court had pretty much held to a stream of commerce interpretation which regarded almost everything as part of interstate commerce.

Further, private schools and institutions, especially non-profit institutions, could be regulated through the Internal Revenue Service. Non-profit institutions such as religious affiliated private schools, and universities that claimed tax-exempt status, could lose their tax-exempt status if they practiced racial segregation or discrimination.

 THE SUPREME COURT AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964

Segregationists challenged the Civil Rights Act in the courts. In the case of Katzenbach v. McClung (1964), a family restaurant argued that it was exempt from the provisions of the civil rights act. It agreed that a national chain was part of interstate commerce, but this case involved a local family restaurant. The Court ruled that racial discrimination has a deleterious effect on interstate commerce, and a family restaurant is a part of interstate commerce. Therefore the Federal Government had jurisdiction and family restaurants were covered by the CRA (Oxford Companion, p. 169). The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was upheld.

Heart of Atlanta Motel v. US (1964) involved a motel. It too was held to be a place of public accommodation involved in interstate commerce. (Oxford Companion, p. 148). In both cases the Court took the position that if you serve the public you must do exactly that—serve the public, all of the public, not just the white part.

In Daniel V. Paul (1969), the Court ruled that public recreational areas are places of public accommodation (ibid). Some places closed the centers rather than integrate them.

In Tillman v. Wheaton-Haven Recreation Assoc. (1973) the Supreme Court ruled that a community swimming pool is a place of public accommodation (ibid). Some localities closed pools rather than desegregate them. But public pools cannot discriminate, at least not legally. A private club or private pool is another matter however.

The Supreme Court did in 1964, and thereafter, what it should have done in the Civil Rights cases of 1883, that struck down portions of the Civil Rights Act of 1875. It took America until 1964 to do what it should have done in 1883 and the Plessy case of 1896. The Constitution gives the Federal Government power over interstate commerce. The difference was, that by 1964 the power of the Federal Government over interstate commerce was well established. That power would not be noticed by the Supreme Court until the Wabash case of 1886 and the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 [which created the Interstate Commerce Commission]. If Plessy's lawyer had thought of it, he could have argued in 1896 that states cannot impose a requirement for segregation in INTERSTATE travel or carriers or facilities involved in interstate travel and commerce. Whether the South would have obeyed such a ruling is, of course, another matter.

VIOLENT BACKLASH IN SOUTH

James Chaney was a native Afro-American Mississippian (21). Michael Schwerner (24) and Andrew Goodman (20) were Northern, white, Jews from New York. They were civil rights workers taking part in the Freedom Summer, in 1964, organized by SNCC and CORE and a federation of civil rights organizations. The objective was to pursue voter registration. A church had been burned, and they stopped to visit the site on June 21st. Goodman and Schwerner were members of CORE. The three men were in a blue Ford station wagon, and were arrested by deputy Cecil Price on charges of speeding. They were "released" at about 10 pm that evening, and "disappeared."

The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by the Senate on June 19, 1964 had enraged Mississippians like Cecil Price, who was involved in the murder of  Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney on the night of June 21, 1964.

However, it is important to clarify that the murder of Schwerner and Goodman did not CAUSE the civil rights bill to pass. It had ALREADY passed the Senate on June 19, and merely needed to be reconciled with the House version, which was a minor, technical process. The murder of the night of June 21-22 was an act of retaliation or revenge, lashing out in anger against the passage of the bill. And the murders were yet another act of terrorism, designed to frighten and intimidate blacks and nonracist whites and deter nonracist whites from coming to Missisisippi. It was not "necessary" for whites to be killed in order for the civil rights act to be passed. It is true, however, that the murder of a Northern white minister in Selma in 1965 was critical to the national uproar over the Voting Rights Act.
 

But part of the pattern of the Civil Rights movement is that every gain in the movement was followed by a backlash, by some type of violent retaliation designed to punish the movement for its success. Thus, the very same night June 11-June 12, 1963, that Kennedy went on television to announce he would ask the Congress for a civil rights bill, a white supremacist (Byron de la Beckwith)  killed Medger Evers in Mississippi. Two weeks after the March on Washington, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham was firebombed. And the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by the Senate on June 19, 1964 enraged Mississippians like Cecil Price, who was involved in the murder of  Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney on June 21, 1964. Likewise, after the Selma campaign in 1965, Mrs, Viola Gregg-Liuzzo was murdered. Every success of the movement was followed by a violent backlash by white supremacists.