Civil Rights Act of 1960: Voting Referees and Criminal Penalties Still Prove Inadequate Against Southern Resistance

President Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1960, expanding on the 1957 Act by authorizing federal courts to appoint voting referees to register Black voters and imposing criminal penalties for obstruction of court orders. However, the law’s case-by-case approach and dependence on litigation proved inadequate against systematic Southern resistance, demonstrating the limits of incremental reform.

The 1960 Act addressed some weaknesses of the 1957 law while maintaining its fundamentally cautious approach. Federal judges could appoint voting referees when patterns of discrimination were proven—but only after successful Justice Department litigation in individual counties, a process taking years. Fleeing the state to avoid subpoenas in voting rights cases became a federal crime, responding to registrars who disappeared when investigators arrived.

The law required state officials to preserve voting records for 22 months and make them available to federal authorities, addressing the destruction of evidence that had frustrated earlier investigations. Criminal penalties were established for threatening or coercing voters, and for crossing state lines to avoid prosecution for bombing or burning buildings.

Southern Democrats extracted concessions weakening enforcement. The referee provision required proof that racial discrimination had occurred in a specific county and that individual Black applicants had been denied the right to register after the litigation was filed. Each Black voter seeking referee assistance had to file a separate application with the court. The process was designed to be so cumbersome that meaningful change would take decades.

The inadequacy of the case-by-case litigation approach became clear in the years following passage. By 1963, the Justice Department had filed 71 voting rights lawsuits, yet Black voter registration in the Deep South had increased only marginally. In Mississippi, less than 7% of eligible Black citizens were registered. Dallas County, Alabama—later the site of Bloody Sunday—had 15,115 Black residents of voting age but only 335 registered voters.

The 1960 Act’s failure to produce meaningful change radicalized the civil rights movement’s approach. The Freedom Rides of 1961, the Birmingham campaign of 1963, and ultimately the Selma campaign of 1965 demonstrated that legislative incrementalism and litigation could not overcome entrenched resistance. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 would finally abandon the case-by-case approach in favor of automatic federal intervention in discriminatory jurisdictions—the kind of systemic reform the 1957 and 1960 Acts had deliberately avoided.