The Civil Rights Act of 1967: A Landmark in American History

There was no Civil Rights Act of 1967

Congress did not pass a Civil Rights Act in 1967, and no law by that name exists. The confusion is understandable. The landmark federal civil rights laws of the era arrived in 1957, 1960, 1964, 1965 and 1968, and 1967 sits in the middle of that run as a year of argument, stalled bills and growing unrest rather than of new statutes. The laws people usually have in mind are the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which included the Fair Housing Act.

This article lays out that sequence and then looks at what Congress actually did, and failed to do, in 1967.

The real sequence of federal acts

1957. The first federal civil rights law since Reconstruction was signed by President Eisenhower in September 1957. It created the Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department and a Commission on Civil Rights, and it gave the government a way to seek court orders against interference with voting. Its enforcement power was modest, and Southern senators had worked to weaken it, including a long speech by Strom Thurmond.

1960. A second act, signed in May 1960, added provisions on voting records and court-appointed referees. It too was shaped by a Southern filibuster and produced limited gains in registration.

1964. The Civil Rights Act signed on 2 July 1964 was far broader. It outlawed discrimination in public accommodations and in employment, authorised action against segregated public facilities, and tied federal funding to non-discrimination.

1965. After the violence at Selma, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, signed on 6 August 1965. It suspended literacy tests in covered areas and put federal oversight on voting practices.

1968. The Civil Rights Act of 1968, signed on 11 April 1968, a week after Martin Luther King was killed, contained the Fair Housing Act, along with other provisions, among them protections for civil rights workers and an anti-riot section.

Each law answered a particular gap left by the last one. Voting rights were a main concern in 1957 and 1960, segregation and jobs in 1964, enforcement of the ballot in 1965 and housing in 1968.

What Congress did in 1967

In 1967 the legislative momentum of the mid-decade had faded. President Johnson, who had pushed the 1964 and 1965 laws through, still wanted further civil rights measures, and he sent proposals to Congress. They included protection for people exercising civil rights and an attempt to revive a fair housing measure. But the bill that had failed in 1966 did not return in any successful form in 1967.

Several things worked against him. The Republican gains in the 1966 midterm elections had cut the Democratic majority. The Vietnam War was consuming political attention and money, and the effects of Vietnam War escalation on the federal budget made new domestic programmes harder to fund. Congress was also in a sour mood about the cities. In March 1967 the House voted to exclude Adam Clayton Powell from his seat, an episode tied up with race, ethics and power, and the Powell exclusion showed how hostile the climate could be.

The summer then brought the Newark riot and the Detroit uprising, and many members of Congress responded with calls for tougher law enforcement rather than new civil rights protections. The 1966 bill had already died to a Senate filibuster that September, and the sense that the Senate would block anything similar lingered.

Congress did pass some legislation in 1967 that touched the era’s concerns, such as the Public Broadcasting Act, but none of it was a civil rights act. Programmes of the Great Society and the War on Poverty continued to operate, although they faced criticism and budget pressure.

Why the confusion persists

Titles like “Civil Rights Act of 1967” tend to come from a mix of memory and approximation. Several things really did happen in 1967 that were tied to civil rights, and they are easy to blur into a single imagined law:

• The Supreme Court decided Loving v. Virginia in June 1967, striking down state bans on interracial marriage. That was a court ruling, not an act of Congress.
• Thurgood Marshall became the first Black Supreme Court justice, confirmed in August 1967 and taking his seat in October.
• Carl Stokes in Cleveland and Richard Hatcher in Gary were elected mayors in November 1967.
• Johnson created the Kerner Commission after the summer’s unrest, and it reported in 1968.

None of these was legislation of the kind that gives the 1957-1968 run its shape. The accurate way to read 1967 is as a year between landmarks: the great statutes of 1964 and 1965 were in force and being tested, while the next major bill was still blocked.

What came next

After King’s death in April 1968 the political climate shifted enough for the House to accept the Senate’s version of the housing bill within days. The civil rights movement itself was changing at the same time, with debates about Black Power, urban poverty and the war crowding the older focus on segregation law. Later laws and court decisions extended the work, but the central statutes remained those of 1964, 1965 and 1968.

Quick reference

There is no row for 1967 because no act was passed that year.