Constitutional Dialogue and the Civil Rights Act of 1964

Abstract

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 [1] represented a seminal legislative accomplishment of the twentieth century. Its eleven titles addressed racial discrimination in voting (Title I), public accommodations (Title II), public facilities (Title III), public education (Title IV), publicly financed programs (Title VI) and employment (Title VII).[2] It sought to remedy legislatively the Jim Crow laws and practices that had long contributed to making blacks second-class citizens in America and it provided the Executive Branch tools, especially in Title III and VI, to help implement Brown v. Board of Education.[3] In view of the bill’s focus on racial discrimination, one would expect the legislative discussion to have centered around the injustice of segregation and the burden it imposed on American society. Much of it did. Yet legislators devoted a substantial portion of their attention to constitutional issues relevant to the bill.