The Civil Rights Act Of 1964

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The American Civil War ended in 1865, the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves, yet a century later, the United States was not an equal country. The Emancipation Proclamation may have freed the slaves from their masters, but it did not ensure freedom in society. African Americans faced abuse, segregation, and discrimination in every corner. Some African Americans moved to the North, it had been an escape from slavery before, yet the North was no longer a safe haven, African American faced the same treatment there. They needed someone to stand up for them, they needed a voice in politics, and John F. Kennedy came into the political arena and did just that. While Kennedy was only in office a mere 1,000 days, his term cut short by Lee Harvey Oswald, the man accused of assassinating Kennedy, his impact on the civil rights movement was just as monumental as Abraham Lincoln’s contribution a century prior. While Lyndon B. Johnson was the politician that signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the most far-reaching law on civil rights in history, John F. Kennedy should receive the credit for that colossal event in history; Johnson however, deserves credit for furthering the civil rights movement.
Historians have described the decade of the 1960s as a second civil war. Africans Americans were stilling fighting for freedom. African Americans, along with their white supporters, protested for the liberties promised to them in the Constitution. The fourteenth amendment classified them as citizens, yet society denied them the rights citizens deserved. The fifteenth amendment gave African Americans the right to vote, but racists ensured that they would not vote by adding arbitrary, illegal regulations such as poll taxes or literacy requireme...

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...low Kennedy’s example and support them.
While African Americans trusted Johnson, he never planned to continue supporting their cause. In reality, Johnson was only doing what he believed was his political duty as Vice President. Although Johnson approved the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he never would have supported such liberal bill had he not been Kennedy’s successor. Promptly after enacting the bill, he ordered the FBI to investigate civil rights activists and organizations for alleged ties to Communism. Communism during the 1960s was akin to a witch-hunt. Just as Puritans in Salem claimed people to be witches for their own personal gain in 1692, during the Cold War, Americans would accuse anyone of Communism to exile the person or cause they did not support. Johnson did just that, although it turned out to be fruitless. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was permanent.

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