1960s America will long be remembered for widespread protests against racial discrimination and the Vietnam War, the “make love, not war” generation, and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Federal discrimination bans began with the 13th, 14th, and 15th constitutional amendments (1865- 1870), outlawing slavery and granting full citizenship rights (“equal protection”) to all Americans. However, the Southern states soon circumvented these promised principles by Jim Crow laws, implementing special taxes, literacy tests and other measures to bar African-Americans from voting and exercising other rights. Some states enforced and condoned segregation through violent vigilante groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.

Founded in the 1930s, the American civil rights movement gained its first real foothold in 1954 with Brown v. Board of Education, U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that racial segregation in public schools (the so-called “separate but equal” doctrine) was unconstitutional. Southern states defied the decision by continuing to impose measures that effectively perpetuated segregation, adding fuel to the calls for equal rights and opportunity.

In the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama demonstrations, police employed dogs, clubs and high-pressure fire hoses to suppress nonviolent protesters, including children.

Those brutalities, broadcasted to national TV audiences, led President John Kennedy to propose the Civil Rights Act, signed into law, remarkably, by his successor, Southern Democrat Lyndon Johnson.

The Act remains the country’s principal anti-discrimination law, prohibiting public place segregation and banning employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. It also created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, authorized to sue employers on behalf of workers with discrimination claims.

California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act is this state’s counterpart, enforced by the state’s Civil Rights Department.

All such laws confirm employers should judge people for their competence on the job and not by race, religion and the many other characteristics (“protected classifications”) deemed arbitrary and irrelevant to workplace qualification.

Tim Bowles
February 6, 2026