Civil Rights Act of 1964 - Committee & Passage in The House of Representatives

Committee & Passage in The House of Representatives

President Kennedy met with the Republican leaders on June 11, 1963 prior to his television address that night to discuss the legislation. On June 13, Everett McKinley Dirksen, Senate Minority Leader, and Mike Mansfield, Senate Majority Leader, both voiced support for the president's bill except for provisions guaranteeing equal access to places of public accommodations. This led to several Republican Congressmen drafting a compromise bill to be considered. On June 19, the president sent his bill to Congress as it was originally written, saying legislative action was "imperative". The president's bill first went to the House of Representatives, and referred to the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Emmanuel Celler, a Democrat from New York. After a series of hearings on the bill, Celler's committee strengthened the act, adding provisions to ban racial discrimination in employment, providing greater protection to black voters, eliminating segregation in all publicly owned facilities (not just schools), and strengthening the anti-segregation clauses regarding public facilities such as lunch counters. They also added authorization for the Attorney General to file lawsuits to protect individuals against the deprivation of any rights secured by the Constitution or U.S. law. In essence, this was the controversial "Title III" that had been removed from the 1957 and 1960 Acts. Civil rights organizations pressed hard for this provision because it could be used to protect peaceful protesters and black voters from police brutality and suppression of free speech rights.

Kennedy called the congressional leaders to the White House in late October, 1963 to line up the necessary votes in the House for passage. The bill was reported out of the Judiciary Committee in November 1963, and referred to the Rules Committee, whose chairman, Howard W. Smith, a Democrat and avid segregationist from Virginia, indicated his intention to keep the bill bottled up indefinitely.