It dealt primarily with discriminatory laws and practices in the segregated South, by which African-Americans and Tejanos had been effectively disenfranchised since the late 19th and start of the 20th century.
This law served to more effectively enforce what was set forth in the 1957 act through eliminating certain loopholes in it, and to establish additional provisions.
Aside from addressing voting rights, the Civil Rights Act of 1960 also imposed criminal penalties for obstruction of court orders to limit resistance to the Supreme Court's school desegregation decisions,[1] arranged for free education for military members' children, and banned the act of fleeing to avoid prosecution for property damage.
This period was marked by various attempts made to redress the inequities imposed on African Americans through slavery.
[4] By 1873, Supreme Court decisions began to limit the scope of Reconstruction legislation, and many whites resorted to intimidation and violence to undermine African Americans' voting rights.
The Jim Crow Laws were established during the 19th century and served to block African American votes, ban integration in public facilities such as schools, and forbid interracial marriage in the South.
During the 1950s, much of United States public opinion was still marked by a resistant attitude toward desegregation and racial equality, particularly in the South.
On February 25, 1956, he proposed Massive Resistance, a set of laws created in efforts to block integration.
[7] Aside from politicians, large groups of Southern white Americans also mobilized in efforts to prevent integration.
Some white citizens elected to educate their children through private academies, which initially ran on public funds until this was found faulty in court.
In his message to Congress on February 5, 1959, he called for further advancements within it, stating that “every individual regardless of his race, religion, or national origin is entitled to the equal protection of the laws.
In the annual presidential State of the Union speech on January 7, 1960, Eisenhower spoke out about the necessity for advancement in civil rights legislation, referencing constitutionality as justification.
Of Title VI: "It holds great promise of making the Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution fully meaningful.
(Southerners had long acted as a voting bloc to stop any federal civil legislation[15] In January 1960, liberal non-Southern Democrats pushed for a discharge petition to move the bill from the Committee to the Senate floor.
It introduced criminal penalties for all willful attempts to interfere with the due exercise of rights or the performance of duties under any court order.
The amendment outlaws interstate or international movement to avoid prosecution for damaging or destroying any building or structure.
The section also makes the conveying of false information or threats to damage or destroy any building or property illegal.
Section 302 declares that any person that intentionally alters, damages, or destroys a record shall be fined no more than $1,000 and/or imprisoned for no more than one year.
635) by declaring in an added subsection that "each member of the Commission shall have the power and authority to administer oaths or take statements of witnesses under affirmation.
[26] The Civil Rights Act of 1960 dealt with race and color but omitted coverage of those discriminated against for national origin, although Eisenhower had called for it in his message to Congress.