A new Gallup poll shows a significant decline in the number of U.S. adults who believe that civil rights for Black Americans have improved in their lifetime. Of the 1,200 U.S. participants, 59% believe that civil rights for Black Americans have improved, the lowest percentage since 1995, when Gallup first began tracking this data. That year, 83% of U.S. adults expressed improvement. In 2011, during Barack Obama’s first term as president, 89% noted progress, the highest-ever percentage of pollers.
The descension matches a common sentiment around present-day heightened racial injustice. The latest case in point: Kentucky grand jury’s decision not to indict any of the three Louisville police officers involved in the death of Breonna Taylor, who was killed in March after officers fired more than 20 shots into her apartment.
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Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Pub.L. 88–352, 78 Stat. 241, enacted July 2, 1964) is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, and later sexual orientation. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requirements, racial segregation in schools and public accommodations, and employment discrimination.
Initially, powers given to enforce the act were weak, but these were supplemented during later years. Congress asserted its authority to legislate under several different parts of the United States Constitution, principally its power to regulate interstate commerce under Article One (section 8), its duty to guarantee all citizens equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment, and its duty to protect voting rights under the Fifteenth Amendment.
The legislation had been proposed by President John F. Kennedy in June 1963, but it was opposed by filibuster in the Senate. After Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed the bill forward. The United States House of Representatives passed the bill on February 10, 1964, and after a 54-day filibuster, it passed the United States Senate on June 19, 1964. The final vote was 290–130 in the House of Representatives and 73–27 in the Senate. After the House agreed to a subsequent Senate amendment, the Civil Rights Act was signed into law by President Johnson at the White House on July 2, 1964.
Source – Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Updated: 22 September 2020) Wikipedia. Available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964 (Accessed: 28 September 2020)