Civil Rights Act of 1964 Passes After Filibuster Defeats Corporate Southern Resistance

President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in employment and public accommodations. The legislation passes only after defeating a 60-working-day filibuster led by the “Southern Bloc” of 18 southern Democratic Senators and Republican John Tower of Texas, organized by Senator Richard Russell (D-GA).

The Act represents the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, establishing Title VII employment protections and creating the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to enforce workplace anti-discrimination provisions. Title II prohibits segregation in public accommodations including hotels, restaurants, theaters, and retail establishments.

Southern business interests mount fierce opposition based on constitutional and property rights arguments. White business owners claim Congress lacks constitutional authority to ban segregation in public accommodations and characterize the law as federal overreach infringing on business owners’ freedom to decide with whom to conduct business. Southern Democrats, also known as Dixiecrats, portray the law as an attack on the “southern way of life” and prime evidence of federal intent to force racial integration on the South.

The opposition draws on the “massive resistance” movement infrastructure established a decade earlier in response to Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which ended legal segregation of public schools. Senator Strom Thurmond mounts a historic filibuster effort using Confederate rhetoric from the Civil War era.

Business response after passage reveals the performative nature of much resistance. Metropolitan business owners express “surprise and relief at the positive impact” of the Act. Morrison’s, the largest cafeteria chain in the South, announces within minutes of Johnson’s signing that it will serve Black customers “rather than buck the Federal Government.” Civil rights leaders launch massive efforts to test compliance and seek implementation of Title II.

Resistance flares primarily in smaller towns and rural areas that had not experienced sit-ins and protests. The Justice Department brings 93 cases in the first three years (supplemented by many private suits). However, large corporations generally comply quickly, recognizing the business advantages of expanded markets and the legal inevitability of enforcement.

The Civil Rights Act’s passage nonetheless triggers significant political realignment. Senator Barry Goldwater, who voted against the Act, makes opposition to civil rights legislation the basis of his Republican presidential campaign in 1964. Senator Thurmond demonstrates political solidarity by abandoning the Democratic Party to support Goldwater, encouraging a steady stream of southern Democrats to join the Republicans. This switch represents the first step toward absolute Republican political control of the South and the incorporation of segregationist voters into the Republican coalition—a transformation that fundamentally reshapes American politics for the next six decades.

The infrastructure of resistance to the Civil Rights Act—constitutional arguments against federal authority, property rights claims, and characterization of anti-discrimination law as government overreach—establishes rhetorical templates later adapted for opposition to environmental regulation, labor rights, and consumer protection.