## Learning Outcomes

- Explain why federal action became decisive in the civil rights movement of the 1960s
- Identify the major provisions of the Civil Rights Act of **1964**
- Distinguish between the **24th Amendment**, the **Voting Rights Act of 1965**, and the **Fair Housing Act of 1968**
- Understand how grassroots protest pushed the federal government to act
- Recall key Supreme Court cases including **Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States** and **South Carolina v. Katzenbach**
- Analyse how the civil rights laws of the 1960s revived the promises of the **14th** and **15th Amendments**
- Use this topic in SAQ, DBQ, and LEQ answers on causation, continuity, and change over time

## AP United States History Syllabus

For the AP United States History, you are expected to understand federal civil rights action in the 1960s, with a focus on the following syllabus points:

- Know that the **Civil Rights Act of 1964** was signed on **July 2, 1964** and expanded federal enforcement against segregation and discrimination
- Identify the difference between **Title II** public accommodations, **Title IV** school desegregation, **Title VI** federally funded programs, and **Title VII** employment discrimination
- Understand that the **24th Amendment** was ratified in **1964** and banned poll taxes in federal elections
- Explain how the **Voting Rights Act of 1965**, signed on **August 6, 1965**, attacked literacy tests and allowed direct federal intervention in discriminatory jurisdictions
- Understand the significance of **Selma** and **Bloody Sunday** in creating support for voting-rights legislation
- Identify how **Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States (1964)** and **South Carolina v. Katzenbach (1966)** upheld federal civil rights enforcement
- Know that the **Fair Housing Act of 1968** extended civil rights action into housing discrimination
- Explain why historians often describe these measures as a high point of the **Second Reconstruction**

## Test Your Knowledge

_Attempt these questions before reading this article. If you find some difficult or cannot remember the answers, look more closely at that area during your revision._

1. What was the main difference between the **Civil Rights Act of 1964** and the **Voting Rights Act of 1965**?
2. Why did the events at **Selma** matter so much for federal action?
3. What did **Title II** and **Title VII** of the Civil Rights Act do?
4. How did the **24th Amendment** differ from later voting-rights enforcement?
5. Name two Supreme Court cases that supported federal civil rights action in the mid-1960s.

## Introduction

The civil rights movement is often remembered through marches, speeches, and protest campaigns. Those mattered. But for APUSH, you also need to see that protest alone did not change American law. The major turning point came when the **federal government** acted directly through constitutional amendments, congressional legislation, executive enforcement, and Supreme Court decisions.

This makes the subtopic especially important. It lets you explain both **causation** and **change over time**. The Reconstruction Amendments had promised equality after the Civil War, but Southern states spent decades evading those promises. In the 1960s, federal action finally gave those amendments real force again.

> **Key Term: Second Reconstruction**
> A phrase historians use for the civil rights breakthroughs of the 1950s and 1960s, when the federal government enforced Black civil and voting rights more aggressively than it had since Reconstruction.

### Why federal action became necessary

By the early 1960s, many African Americans in the South still faced segregation in public life, exclusion from voting, job discrimination, and violence. Court decisions such as **Brown v. Board of Education** had declared segregated schooling unconstitutional, but court rulings alone were often slow to enforce. Local officials could stall, defy, or intimidate.

That is why federal legislation mattered so much. A court can announce a principle, but Congress and the executive branch can create enforcement systems. In civil rights, that meant lawsuits by the attorney general, funding cutoffs, federal examiners, and agencies to investigate discrimination.

> **Key Term: federal civil rights enforcement**
> The use of national government power—laws, courts, agencies, and federal officials—to make states, localities, and private actors obey civil rights protections.

The Cold War also forms part of the context. The United States claimed to lead the “free world,” yet segregation and disfranchisement damaged that claim. Civil rights became not just a domestic issue but also a problem of national credibility.

> **Test Tip:** In an LEQ or DBQ, do not treat protest and federal action as separate stories. Show the chain: local injustice led to protest, protest produced national media attention, and that pressure helped create federal legislation.

### The Civil Rights Act of 1964: what it did and why it mattered

The **Civil Rights Act of 1964**, signed by President **Lyndon B. Johnson** on **July 2, 1964**, was the broadest civil rights law in modern U.S. history. It did not focus on just one field. It attacked discrimination in several major parts of life at once.

A key reason it mattered is that it moved beyond moral appeals and beyond single court rulings. It created legal tools that the federal government could actually use.

> **Key Term: Civil Rights Act of 1964**
> A major federal law signed on July 2, 1964, that banned discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and federally funded programs, and strengthened desegregation enforcement.

The law is easiest to revise by its main titles.

> **Key Term: Title II**
> The section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibited discrimination in public accommodations such as hotels, restaurants, and theaters.

Title II attacked one of the clearest features of **Jim Crow**: businesses open to the public but closed in practice to Black customers. This was a major change because it targeted everyday segregation, not just government institutions.

> **Key Term: Title IV**
> The section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that addressed school desegregation and authorized the U.S. attorney general to file suits to enforce it.

Title IV mattered because Southern districts had often delayed compliance with **Brown**. This title gave the federal government a more active enforcement role.

> **Key Term: Title VI**
> The section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that barred discrimination in programs receiving federal funds.

Title VI gave Washington influence. If a school district, hospital, or other institution took federal money, the federal government could pressure it to stop discrimination. This is a good example of how federal action worked through money, not just through speeches or symbolic statements.

> **Key Term: Title VII**
> The section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibited employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

Title VII pushed civil rights into the workplace. This mattered because legal equality in public spaces meant less if employers could still block Black advancement.

> **Key Term: Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)**
> The federal agency created to enforce the employment-discrimination provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The **EEOC** shows why enforcement is central to this topic. Congress did not just state a principle; it created an institution to investigate complaints and apply the law.

The act also shows presidential leadership and congressional politics. Kennedy had proposed civil rights legislation in **1963**, but it stalled. After his assassination, Johnson used both Kennedy’s memory and his own legislative skill to push it through. Southern Democrats tried to block it with a filibuster, but a coalition of Northern Democrats and Republicans overcame that resistance.

This is a strong APUSH point: the Democratic Party was divided by region, not simply by party label.

### How the courts backed the Civil Rights Act

Congress passed the law, but the Supreme Court helped secure it. One of the most testable cases is **Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States (1964)**.

> **Key Term: Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States**
> A 1964 Supreme Court case that upheld Title II of the Civil Rights Act by ruling that discrimination by a motel serving interstate travelers affected interstate commerce.

Why is this case important? Because the Court upheld Title II using the **Commerce Clause**. Students often wrongly connect every civil rights case to the 14th Amendment. This one is different. The argument was that businesses serving interstate travelers affected interstate commerce, so Congress could regulate them.

That ruling mattered because it strengthened the federal government’s ability to desegregate private businesses open to the public.

> **Test Tip:** If a question asks how the federal government justified desegregating hotels and restaurants, think **Commerce Clause**, not automatically the 14th or 15th Amendment.

### Voting rights: from the 24th Amendment to Selma

Voting rights need separate attention because ending segregation in public places did not automatically end disfranchisement.

The **24th Amendment**, ratified in **1964**, banned the **poll tax** in federal elections.

> **Key Term: 24th Amendment**
> A constitutional amendment ratified in 1964 that banned poll taxes in federal elections.

This was important, but limited. It did not by itself eliminate every barrier to Black voting. Southern officials still used literacy tests, intimidation, registration obstacles, and violence. That is why the Voting Rights Act became necessary.

Grassroots activism exposed this problem dramatically. In places like **Selma, Alabama**, African Americans trying to register faced direct obstruction. The Selma to Montgomery movement aimed to force national attention onto voting discrimination.

**Bloody Sunday** in **March 1965**, when marchers were attacked by state troopers, became a turning point. Television coverage showed brutality to a national audience. Johnson then addressed Congress on **March 15, 1965**, invoking the movement’s own language with “We shall overcome.”

This is classic causation for APUSH: local violence led to national outrage, which helped produce federal legislation.

### The Voting Rights Act of 1965: direct federal intervention

The **Voting Rights Act of 1965**, signed on **August 6, 1965**, was stronger than earlier voting measures because it did more than ban one device. It created direct federal mechanisms to break local resistance.

> **Key Term: Voting Rights Act of 1965**
> A federal law that enforced the 15th Amendment by banning discriminatory voting barriers and allowing direct federal oversight in areas with histories of voter suppression.

The law targeted **tests or devices** such as literacy tests and similar barriers.

> **Key Term: federal examiners**
> Federal officials authorized under the Voting Rights Act to register voters directly in jurisdictions with histories of discrimination.

This was a major shift. Instead of waiting for hostile local registrars, the national government could step in itself.

The act also used a **coverage formula** to identify jurisdictions with especially severe histories of discrimination.

> **Key Term: preclearance**
> The requirement under the Voting Rights Act that certain jurisdictions obtain federal approval before changing voting laws or procedures.

Preclearance was powerful because it tried to stop discrimination before it happened, rather than only punishing it afterward. That is a major distinction students often miss. Title II of the Civil Rights Act mainly attacked segregation in public accommodations. The Voting Rights Act attacked the machinery of disfranchisement.

The Supreme Court upheld the act in **South Carolina v. Katzenbach (1966)**.

> **Key Term: South Carolina v. Katzenbach**
> A 1966 Supreme Court case that upheld the Voting Rights Act as a valid use of congressional enforcement power under the 15th Amendment.

This case matters because it rests on the **15th Amendment**, not the Commerce Clause. That gives you a useful comparison:

- **Heart of Atlanta Motel** = Commerce Clause
- **South Carolina v. Katzenbach** = 15th Amendment enforcement power

That distinction is excellent evidence in a stronger essay.

### Housing, continuity, and the limits of federal reform

Even after the breakthroughs of **1964** and **1965**, racial inequality remained deeply rooted, especially in northern and western cities. This is one of the best ways to show **continuity** as well as change.

Legal segregation in buses, lunch counters, and voting rules could be attacked directly. Housing discrimination was harder because it often operated through local customs, private decisions, intimidation, and lending practices. African Americans who had moved North during the Great Migration often found that they had escaped Southern **de jure** segregation only to face Northern **de facto** segregation.

The federal government responded with the **Fair Housing Act of 1968**, passed shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

> **Key Term: Fair Housing Act of 1968**
> A federal law that prohibited discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin.

This law extended civil rights into a new sphere. That mattered because it showed the federal government recognizing that equal citizenship required more than access to lunch counters and ballots. It also required fair access to neighborhoods, mortgages, and housing markets.

Still, this is also where you should avoid overclaiming. Federal action achieved major legal victories, but it did not erase poverty, residential segregation, or racial inequality overnight. By the late 1960s, many activists had grown frustrated with the limits of gradual reform. That frustration helps explain the rise of **Black Power** and more militant criticism of American institutions.

> **Test Tip:** For a continuity-and-change essay, argue both sides. Change: the federal government passed sweeping civil rights laws and enforced them. Continuity: racism persisted in housing, jobs, schools, and urban poverty.

### How to use this subtopic in APUSH essays

A strong APUSH answer on this topic should not just list laws. It should show relationships.

For an LEQ on causation, you might argue that grassroots activism and televised violence forced the federal government to act more decisively in the mid-1960s than at any point since Reconstruction. Evidence could include **Selma**, the **24th Amendment**, the **Civil Rights Act of 1964**, and the **Voting Rights Act of 1965**.

For an LEQ on continuity and change over time, you could argue that the 1960s marked a dramatic change in federal enforcement of Black rights, but that discrimination continued in new forms, especially in housing and urban life. Evidence could include the **Fair Housing Act of 1968**, white flight, and ongoing inequality.

For a DBQ, these laws are useful outside evidence because they are precise and high-value. They also help you connect this period back to Reconstruction by arguing that the **14th** and **15th Amendments** were finally being enforced more fully.

## Key Point Checklist

_This article has covered the following key knowledge points:_

- The civil rights breakthroughs of the 1960s are often described as a Second Reconstruction
- Federal action became decisive because local and state officials often resisted court rulings and civil rights protest
- The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed on July 2, 1964
- Title II banned discrimination in public accommodations
- Title IV strengthened school desegregation enforcement
- Title VI barred discrimination in federally funded programs
- Title VII banned employment discrimination and created the EEOC
- Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States upheld Title II using the Commerce Clause
- The 24th Amendment banned poll taxes in federal elections in 1964
- Selma and Bloody Sunday helped generate support for the Voting Rights Act of 1965
- The Voting Rights Act banned literacy-test style barriers and allowed federal examiners and preclearance
- South Carolina v. Katzenbach upheld the Voting Rights Act under the 15th Amendment
- The Fair Housing Act of 1968 extended federal civil rights action into housing
- Federal reform brought major legal change, but racial inequality continued in housing, schools, and urban poverty

## Key Terms and Concepts

- Second Reconstruction
- federal civil rights enforcement
- Civil Rights Act of 1964
- Title II
- Title IV
- Title VI
- Title VII
- Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
- Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States
- 24th Amendment
- Voting Rights Act of 1965
- federal examiners
- preclearance
- South Carolina v. Katzenbach
- Fair Housing Act of 1968


The African American Civil Rights Movement (1960s) - Civil Rights Act and federal action