Civil Rights Act Of 1964 Essay

1. Explain the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and discuss the major provisions of this legislation. Jim Crow laws were in effect from the 1800’s through the 1960’s. They required that African Americans and whites use separate schools, public places, transportation, restrooms, and drinking fountains. In some places, African American hospital patients were even kept separate from whites. African American public spaces such as stores, churches, movie theaters, and schools had separate areas for each church. Public spaces were usually of lower quality than those reserved for whites. Civil rights workers and leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. worked to change these laws. The reverend Martin Luther King Jr. helped lead the civil right
Seventy percent of African Americans voted for him. Civil rights leaders continued to protest. President John F. Kennedy decided he needed to do something so he put together the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but, was assassinated in November 1963. The provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned discrimination based on race, religion, sex, disability, and age. Most employers display these provisions on job applications or the phrase, “equal opportunity employer” whether online or in paper form. Protection from discrimination based on race, religion, sex, disability, etc. unrelated to job performance is embodied in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination Act of 1973, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and the Fourteenth Amendment (Dye, T., & Macmanus, S. 1969). Affirmative Action programs were created to help implement practices and monitor the hiring of African American and female workers to ensure they weren’t being discriminated against. Of course, nonminorities were questioning whether they were being discriminated against because of the AAP. They were afraid minorities were being hired that were less qualified for the job because of this newly created program. Some looked