A New Kind of Democracy? Political and Cultural Developments in the 1960s 411old spiritual that served as an anthem for the movement, “We Shall Overcome.”
In 1964, then, Johnson used his considerable political skills to secure pas-
sage of the Civil Rights Act, which outlawed segregated public accommoda-
tions such as restaurants, restrooms, or businesses; authorized the federal
government to take legal action on behalf of discriminated individuals; estab-
lished a federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission [EEOC] to
investigate racially-harmful hiring practices; and barred racial discrimination
in programs that received federal government money. The militant nonvio-
lence of Birmingham and moral force of Washington had worked magic in
1964, so it seemed. That magic did not make it to Mississippi that summer,
however. SNCC and other groups organized Freedom Summer to expose
segregation in Mississippi, register black voters, and force the government to
act. Black and white students poured into the state to organize local African-
Americans and register them to vote, since only about 7 percent of eligible
Blacks were registered at that time.
FIGuRE 8-6 President Johnsons signs the 1964 Civil Rights Act as Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. look on