Following the Supreme Court ruling in Brown, which eventually led to the integration of public schools,[2] Southern whites began a campaign of "Massive Resistance".

Violence against black people rose; in Little Rock, Arkansas where President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered U.S. paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division to protect nine black teenagers integrating into a public school, the first time federal troops were deployed in the South to settle civil rights issues since the Reconstruction Era.

Despite being the majority in numerous counties and congressional districts in the South, most black people had been effectively disfranchised by discriminatory voter registration rules and laws in those states since the late 19th and early 20th centuries that were heavily instituted and propagated by Southern Democrats.

Civil rights organizations had collected evidence of discriminatory practices, such as the administration of literacy and comprehension tests and poll taxes.

The Democratic Senate majority leader, Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, who would play a vital role in the bill's passage in the Senate,[5] realized that the bill and its journey through Congress could tear apart his party, as southern Democrats vehemently opposed civil rights, and its northern members were strongly in favor of them.

[6] Democratic Senator Richard Russell Jr., of Georgia had denounced the bill as an example of the federal government seeking to impose its laws on states.

This meant that the (on this issue) liberal but hardball Republican operators like the Vice President, Richard Nixon, who had a constitutional right to chair the Senate took a great interest in the Bill.

[8] A bipartisan group of Senators realized that Southerners would not allow passage of the act with Title III, which authorized the US Attorney General to seek preventive relief in civil rights cases.

Majority Leader Johnson convinced Senator Clinton Anderson (D-NM) to introduce an amendment to strip out the enforcement provisions of Title III.

[7] Anderson's initial hesitancy to be associated with the anti-civil rights bloc was met with Johnson's urging to introduce the amendment along with a Republican colleague.

This specter of military involvement in domestic politics became a worry not just for moderate previous supporters of the bill such as Bourke Hickenlooper (R-IA) - who after Russell's speech referred to Title III as a "violation of the civil rights of the white race.

[9] Later President Eisenhower in answer to a direct question on Russell's charges distanced himself from the "exact language" of Title III.

[7] This diminished the already-waning support for the title among Republicans, many of whom opposed its expansion of federal power on conservative grounds in spite of their sympathy towards civil rights causes.

[10] The vote on the amendment did not split purely along partisan or ideological lines; it was opposed by conservative William Knowland (R-CA) and supported by liberal Frank Church (D-ID).

[11] The motivation for Western liberal Democrats to spearhead the cause of weakening the Civil Rights Act of 1957 was attributed to their traditional populist disdain for the perceived disproportionate power wielded by judges to quell labor causes in the Western United States, thus contributing to a resonance with the expansion of jury trial rights,[11] although Lyndon Johnson's biographer Robert Caro also claims that Johnson had facilitated a bargain that Western liberal Democrats would vote with the South in important votes on Civil Rights in return for Southern support for public involvement in the building of the Hells Canyon Dam.

[13] Following the vote, many Republicans were visible in their bitterness, having failed in an opportunity to spearhead the cause of civil rights against a deceitful, partisan Democratic effort.

Idaho senator Henry Dworshak decried that it "practically scuttled any hope of getting an effective civil rights bill.

"[14] Then-Democratic Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, an ardent segregationist, sustained the longest one-person filibuster in history in an attempt to keep the bill from becoming law.

[15] His one-man filibuster lasted 24 hours and 18 minutes; he began with readings of every US state's election laws in alphabetical order.

[16] To prevent a quorum call that could have relieved the filibuster by allowing the Senate to adjourn, cots were brought in from a nearby hotel for the legislators to sleep on while Thurmond discussed increasingly irrelevant and obscure topics.

[21]Part IV, Section 131 banned intimidating, coercing or otherwise interfering with the rights of persons to vote for electors for president and members of Congress.

The United States attorney general was allowed to institute actions, including injunctions and charges of contempt of court, with fines not to exceed $1,000 and six months imprisonment.

Since neither race nor sex was listed among the qualifications, the provision allowed both blacks and women to serve on juries in trials in federal courts.

Media coverage, especially of the violent backlash over the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner near Philadelphia, Mississippi, contributed to national support for civil rights legislation.