1 Historic Progress: Public Accommodations and Voting Rights in the Johnson Years

In the Johnson years, civil rights campaigners faced many challenges. By the summer of 1965, the United States was deeply embroiled in the war in Vietnam, a conflict that drew attention and funding away from racial issues. Just a week after the Voting Rights Act was signed into law, a brutal race riot in the Watts district of Los Angeles left thirty-four people dead and caused millions of dollars in property damage. Smaller riots soon broke out in Chicago, Philadelphia, and other northern cities, and they would be repeated over the next few summers. Reacting to these televised disturbances, many whites associated blacks with uncontrolled lawlessness and unreasonable demands. In August 1966, a Newsweek poll related “the spreading white view that enough is enough for now.” Reflecting this mood, by early 1967 two congressmen, Mississippi’s William Colmer and Florida’s William C. Cramer, were leading efforts to pass an antiriot bill. By June 1967, the presidential aide Fred Panzer reported to LBJ that the races were completely polarized. “Whites are uneasy and resistant,” he noted. “Negroes are impatient.” Panzer cited a Gallup poll showing that 47 percent of southern whites feared racial violence on the streets, up from 44 percent the year before. Although most of the riots had taken place in the North, the southern figure was the highest in the country.¹Close

The president had urged them to “close the springs of racial poison,” but most southern whites were clearly not listening.²Close Between 1964 and 1968, leading southern politicians were bombarded with letters from white constituents that called for harsh action against the rioters. Writing to Democratic senator Richard Russell in 1967, Walter Hawkins Jr. spoke for many. “In my opinion,” he declared, “these niggers riot as a cause to steal and loot. No amount of appeasement … will correct the situation.” “If I were to do what these negroes are doing,” added a correspondent to Senator Herman Talmadge during the Newark riot of 1967, “I would be shot and killed, as I should be, as I would be no better than a mad dog. These black bastards need killing, and I don’t mean two or three, but thousands, if it takes this to save our country.” While Russell gave a cautious reply to such letters, Talmadge expressed enthusiastic agreement.³Close In sharp contrast, blacks saw the violence as a reflection of economic deprivation and called for far-reaching solutions. As Martin Luther King Jr. put it, “More than half of our people are struggling on an island of poverty in the midst of this ocean of material wealth.… In the final analysis this is the reason for the riots and discontent across the nation.”⁴Close

In these years, other problems complicated the task of implementing the new legislation. By 1968, relations between the White House and most civil rights leaders had fallen apart. The causes of the breakdown were complex but included Johnson’s commitment to the war in Vietnam and his feeling that black leaders were not sufficiently appreciative of his landmark civil rights legislation. In addition, the successive riots reduced the possibilities for fundamental economic reforms even as they dramatized how necessary such initiatives were. In 1968, Johnson ended up shelving the recommendations of the Kerner Commission, which called for a wholesale commitment of national resources to narrow the economic gap between the races. It was too embarrassing for LBJ to admit that his Vietnam budget was more than three times greater than the amount that the commission wanted to invest in the cities. “By that time,” recalled SCLC vice president Andrew Young, “I think we had lost faith in President Johnson altogether.”⁵Close

Civil rights activists confronted other fresh difficulties. Prior to 1965, the leading organizations had worked together to overthrow legal segregation and secure black voting rights. While there had always been tensions, particularly between the hierarchical SCLC and the groupfocused Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the fight against overt segregation had created what King’s former aide Bayard Rustin called “an uncommon unity.” Once the civil rights legislation was passed, however, activists differed about the “much more difficult task” of implementing it effectively.⁶Close

Leading civil rights groups certainly experienced many problems. According to Clayborne Carson, after 1965 SNCC was “severely weakened by police repression, loss of white financial support, and internal dissension and disarray.” Many of the difficulties were generated by disputes over black power, which became the group’s driving philosophy when Stokely Carmichael replaced John Lewis as chairman in May 1966. SNCC’s embrace of black power led to the departure of white staffers and produced negative press from formerly sympathetic journalists. Newsweek declared that “SNCC’s Stokely Carmichael preaches ‘black power’ without a program,” while the New Republic dismissed the doctrine as “racism in reverse.” After an ill-fated merger with the Black Panthers, SNCC became a tiny group of warring radicals and no longer engaged in community work. As Carson notes, however, the organization left behind an important legacy, especially in awakening many southern blacks to fight for their political rights.⁷Close

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) did not fare any better. After 1965, factional divisions riddled a group that had initiated the pathbreaking freedom rides just a few years earlier. Advocates of separatism and black power eventually won the day, but, in the process, CORE lost members and influence. In contrast, the SCLC did launch some nonviolent protests in these years, but it struggled to repeat its earlier successes. The group’s ill-fated Chicago campaign highlighted Dr. King’s awareness that blacks’ legal equality had not translated into real economic power. Reflecting this realization, in 1968 King also supported a strike by poorly paid sanitation workers in Memphis.⁸Close

Despite the increasingly difficult national climate, the key task of implementing civil rights legislation began in earnest, and it would carry on in subsequent years. As David C. Carter has shown in an important recent work, the black struggle “continued even through the years of white backlash and ascendant national conservatism.” Reality was far more complex than any neat narrative of decline might suggest, especially when we examine ongoing struggles at the local level. From Virginia to Texas, ordinary blacks were determined to realize the rights granted to them under the law, and they were helped by one organization more than any other. With branches right across the region, the NAACP was uniquely suited to the decentralized nature of the ongoing struggle. While internal divisions over black power damaged other organizations, Roy Wilkins was able to fend off a brief challenge from younger members who were influenced by the doctrine. Under Wilkins’s steady leadership, the NAACP brought numerous lawsuits under the new legislation. In an era in which blacks’ legal rights had been strengthened, the group’s long-standing interest in litigation took on a fresh relevance.⁹Close

Stressing the necessity of ongoing activism, NAACP leaders set the tone for members. “This is no time to let up in any aspect of the struggle,” warned The Crisis in November 1965. “The easy part of the struggle is ending and the more difficult part is just beginning.” Following this lead, NAACP members tested compliance with Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, filed scores of complaints with the EEOC, and challenged “freedom-of-choice” plans that had failed to integrate the schools. These complaints allowed association lawyers to use the federal judiciary to bring about real change. By the time King was assassinated in April 1968, southern blacks had clearly made considerable progress, particularly in desegregating public accommodations and securing greater political power. In these areas, federal officials could also take some of the credit for helping address what LBJ had eloquently termed “the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.”¹⁰Close

The progress that occurred under the Civil Rights Act was particularly noteworthy because southern politicians had tried so hard to stop the bill’s passage. Even more than the Voting Rights Act, the wide-ranging Civil Rights Act promised to transform race relations in the South. As well as demanding the desegregation of public accommodations and schools, the act created the EEOC, a federal agency devoted to tackling job discrimination. As Jason Sokol has noted, “Everything in the law repelled southern politicians, and they made its passage difficult.” When John F. Kennedy had introduced the initial legislation, whites in Birmingham had rioted. After Kennedy’s assassination, LBJ tried everything he could to push the bill through, but southern Democratic senators still filibustered for three months. The lengthy debate consumed an unprecedented sixty-three hundred pages in the Congressional Record. A senator since 1932 and the chairman of the influential Armed Services Committee, Georgia’s Richard Russell orchestrated the longest fight in the history of the chamber. Also playing a leading role was Mississippi’s John Stennis, who insisted that the “so-called civil rights proposals” were “punitive and oppressive.” Taking Title II as an example, Stennis argued that individual business owners should have the right to “select” their own customers and not be told what to do by federal officials.¹¹Close

Southern senators also argued that the Civil Rights Act unfairly picked on the South but allowed discrimination in the North to continue largely untouched. As Russell put it, “The main thrust of this bill is aimed at the Southern states. This is especially true with regard to its harshest and most coercive sections.” White southerners added that the bill was a “special privileges bill” that discriminated against them in favor of blacks. Over the coming years, they would constantly repeat both these claims.¹²Close

Finally recognizing defeat, in June 1964 Russell declared that he and his supporters had “given the last particle of ability and the last iota of physical strength” in an effort to expose the bill’s “manifold evils.” Outnumbered, they eventually admitted defeat, although the law was not enacted until July 2, 1964, more than seven months after Kennedy’s tragic death. Its passage owed much to Johnson, who had worked tirelessly to build support. In signing the law, the president declared, “Those who are equal before God shall now also be equal in the polling booths, in the classrooms, and in hotels, restaurants, movie theatres, and other places that provide service to the public.”¹³Close

Many blacks were delighted with the outcome. As the SCLC worker Willie King recalled, “I was aware, I guess, a few days before President Johnson actually signed it, that the act was going to pass. But when we got the word that it was really going to happen, I think I must have screamed for about five minutes without stopping. We were so elated because a lot of hard work, blood, sweat, and tears, had gone into this act.” The act enshrined many of the rights that African Americans had been fighting for since the early twentieth century. As Roy Wilkins put it, “Such an Act has been the goal of the civil rights movement since the modern civil rights crusade began in 1909 with the organization of the NAACP.”¹⁴Close

In sharp contrast, most southern whites shared Russell’s despondency. The experienced senator received hundreds of letters from whites who thanked him for his efforts. “You fought a valiant fight—you gave your all to the cause,” wrote H. F. Braselton from Braselton, Georgia. “We are so proud of you.… Though our hearts are breaking over that disastrous vote, we are grateful for all you did and thank you.” Correspondents insisted that the legislation represented excessive federal interference in state affairs, especially as it restricted business owners’ right to refuse service. As the Savannah resident Owen H. Page put it, this was “unprecedented police state legislation.” He added, “This law in the hands of one who will abuse it presents a frightening and ominous picture.” Several writers blamed Johnson for the outcome and claimed that they would no longer support the Democratic Party. Drawing on these sentiments, Republican Barry Goldwater won five Deep South states in the 1964 presidential election, including Russell’s home state.¹⁵Close Writers to Alabama governor George Wallace, an outspoken segregationist, expressed great hostility to the “so-called Civil Rights Law,” especially the public accommodations provisions. According to the Birmingham restaurateur Jesse T. Todd, “The Civil Rights Bill … in its present form will destroy America.”¹⁶Close

At the same time, however, it is important to realize that the opinions of southern whites were not monolithic. In his files, for example, Russell collected a large stack of letters from whites urging him to support the bill’s passage. Bravely written, they came from native Georgians who recognized that the South had to change. Many lived in Atlanta, a city that was widely viewed as a symbol of a New South.¹⁷Close Writing from that city, Emmett David Foskey compared the behavior of the southern resisters to an eight-year-old child who had to be dragged to the dentist. “Integration is coming sooner or later,” he wrote, “and you know it as well as I do. Why do we always have to be dragged around by the rest of the country who sneer at the South as being backward? … Let us give the colored man the helping hand of friendship.” Some correspondents even chided Russell directly. “Not only have you abdicated leadership,” charged Atlanta’s Marge Manderson, “you lag behind your constituents.” While he did not reply to all these letters, Russell insisted that he had opposed the Civil Rights Act on constitutional, not racial, grounds.¹⁸Close These letters show that there was a constituency that was ready to accept reform, particularly in the larger urban areas. Once the law had been passed, moreover, many of its political opponents grudgingly accepted it because they realized that they had little choice. Even Russell counseled that, while the act was a “bitter pill,” it was “now the law of the Senate and we must abide by it.” Georgia governor Carl Sanders repeated the message; he had testified against Title II, yet, once the bill was passed, he urged citizens to “pull together” and support it. Even in the Deep South, ordinary whites imbibed this message. A lifelong resident of Natchez, Mississippi, Allen Coley later recalled that whites “didn’t necessarily like it [the Civil Rights Act] but ninety percent of them, ninety-five percent of them knew it was the law, and knew it was something they had to live by.”¹⁹Close

As both sides realized, the public accommodations provisions of the Act were far-reaching. Title II of the act prohibited discrimination on government property and in any business that traded in interstate commerce. It meant that nearly every restaurant, cafeteria, sports arena, and motel had to desegregate at once. It was a powerful statement of the principle of equal access, and it quickly secured real results. In April 1966, Johnson proudly reported to Congress that the fruits of Title II were “already impressively apparent.” He explained, “Discrimination in places of public accommodation—perhaps the most unbearable insult to Negro citizens—has been made unlawful. The mandate of that law has spread faster and more effectively than its most optimistic supporters believed possible.” In the following year, the NAACP broadly agreed with the president’s assessment. “Title II may safely be considered the most widely and effectively implemented section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,” it concluded in a key report.²⁰Close

While the provisions of Title II were far-reaching, several other factors help explain why these changes took place. When the act was passed, many cities in the Upper South had already desegregated public facilities, and, thus, the law merely formalized existing arrangements. Elsewhere, it was relatively easy to desegregate public accommodations, as it was often simply a case of removing white and colored signs. There were few of the complications that occurred when workplaces or schools were integrated. Once the changes started, they generated their own momentum. While many whites were initially hostile, over time their attitudes softened. In 1966, one Newsweek poll found that the proportion of southern whites who objected to sitting next to an African American in a restaurant had fallen from 50 percent in 1963 to 42 percent.²¹Close

Officials from the Johnson administration also worked to encourage voluntary compliance, and this made a difference. Part of the Department of Commerce, the Community Relations Service (CRS) was empowered by the law to assist communities in resolving racial disputes that arose from Title II’s provisions.²²Close Bound by statute to confidentiality, CRS staff visited many southern communities and quietly encouraged acceptance of the law. In the fall of 1964, for example, two CRS agents visited McComb, Mississippi, and established communications with white and black leaders. Their task was not easy; between June 22 and September 30, 1964, seventeen unsolved bombings had occurred in the town, which had a reputation as one of the most repressive in the state. In November, the CRS’s Harold C. Fleming was, consequently, very pleased when several hundred citizens signed an advertisement urging residents to abandon violence and respect the new law. “We were able to give some guidance not only as to the wording of the statement but also as to the general strategy to be followed in the community,” he noted in a confidential report. As a result, tests of public accommodations by local blacks went forward “without incident.” The case typified the CRS’s work; by December 1965, its representatives had worked in more than two hundred communities. Overall, CRS director Calvin Kytle claimed that his agents had “helped bring about a new and expanding consciousness of what it will be to have a genuinely open society.”²³Close

Other agencies carried out important work. Justice Department officials enlisted the help of the SRC and the Potomac Institute and used them to spread the message that desegregation would not lead to economic losses. In June 1964, for example, the SRC sponsored a gathering in Atlanta that urged local people to support Title II. In meetings with business and community groups, federal officials also stressed the necessity of change. Responsible for coordinating the activity, one government official explained, “We are trying to convince them that putting off compliance is only buying trouble for a town. This isn’t like prohibition. The law isn’t going to go away.” Justice Department officials also promoted voluntary observance because they recognized that it was very difficult to compel southerners to change, especially as the Civil Rights Division did not have the resources to prosecute numerous offenders. When the Civil Rights Act was passed, for example, the Justice Department had just 105 attorneys on staff.²⁴Close

In larger towns and cities, the changes happened quickly. In Georgia, most business owners followed the lead of the Georgia Restaurant Association, which told its members that they had “no alternative but to comply.” In Atlanta, civic leaders backed up the association’s policy, largely because they feared that defiance could hurt the economy. The chamber of commerce urged all businesses to “adjust promptly and peacefully” to the law, a line that was reinforced by the influential Atlanta Constitution. In other major centers, the example of community leaders frequently made a difference. Jackson mayor Allen Thompson, for instance, urged businesses in the Mississippi capital to comply even though he personally disliked the law.²⁵Close

There were still some pockets of resistance, of course. On the whole, hostility was greater in rural areas, particularly in the Deep South, partly because community leaders failed to take a stand. In February 1964, one Johnson administration report captured the mixed picture. “In general, urban areas are making more progress than rural areas,” it concluded, “and the more populous states are moving more quickly than states like Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama.” Once the law was passed, this pattern persisted. In January 1965, for example, an interracial group visited a truck stop in Forrest City, Arkansas, and were eventually served. The two blacks received exactly what they had ordered, but the white customer found that his eggs were overcooked and there was salt in his coffee. “I’ll serve niggers, as the law says,” commented the manager candidly, “but I don’t intend to cater to white integrationists.”²⁶Close While there were scattered reports of similar incidents, in much of the rural South blacks remained too intimidated to even seek service at traditionally white establishments. In small towns such as Lexington, Virginia, and Port St. Joe, Florida, signs came down, but little else changed. As late as 1967, the NAACP was still pushing for the desegregation of businesses in some rural areas.²⁷Close

In the Deep South, some political leaders also failed to set a good example. Most notable was the case of George Wallace, who did not respond to CRS advice to urge compliance. Rather, Wallace boasted that the public accommodations provisions would be “universally violated” and that it would require a “police state” to enforce them.²⁸Close

Not surprisingly, some whites followed their governor’s lead. In September 1964, three black clergymen were refused service at a gas station located between Birmingham and Anniston. Rather than assisting them, the station’s attendants attacked the preachers’ car with a “heavy blunt instrument” and subjected them to “vulgar and abusive language.” The men protested to Wallace about the incident, but he failed to intervene.²⁹Close The governor was more responsive to complaints from white business owners that black customers were not as clean or trustworthy as whites. From the small town of Guntersville, for example, the restaurateur Mrs. Beulah Bryson moaned to Wallace about having to serve blacks. “Is there really a law that can do this to people?” she asked. As late as August 1966, the fiery politician was still calling for the Civil Rights Act to be repealed because it destroyed whites’ “right to use property as we see fit.”³⁰Close

While resistance to Title II was generally concentrated in rural areas, there were exceptions, and one of the most notable ironically occurred in Atlanta. It was true that many Atlanta businesses had desegregated well before July 1964, yet there were a few holdouts.³¹Close Just one day after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, Lester Maddox refused to serve three black theology students at his Pickrick Cafeteria, a thriving establishment that was known for its chicken specials. When the students returned a second time, they were chased away by Maddox and several white customers. Anticipating these tests, Maddox had been selling ax handles for some time, and the weapons were now used to threaten the black students. Such conduct was not unusual for a man who had founded Georgians Unwilling to Surrender (GUTS) in the wake of the student sit-ins. Harboring political ambitions after two unsuccessful tilts at the mayor’s office, Maddox insisted that he would fight the law. “Pickrick will never integrate,” he fumed. “They won’t ever get any of that chicken.”³²Close

Maddox’s stand won him popularity, and business went up 40 percent after the July 3 incident. Even in other states, whites noticed the former steelworker from the wrong side of the tracks. In a revealing letter, George Wallace congratulated Maddox on what he had done. “I am glad that you have stood and made the test—your action, I am sure, will help alert many people throughout the country,” he claimed. “I know that there are many people from my state who stand with you as do those in my administration.”³³Close The Maddox case also highlighted how difficult it was to effectively resist Title II, however. Because of his actions, attorneys from the NAACP LDF and the Justice Department were able to join together and sue Maddox. By August, the federal courts had ordered the Pickrick to desegregate at once. After another futile attempt to evade the law, Maddox sold his enterprise. Seeing the writing on the wall, most southern business owners were unwilling to follow the Georgian’s example. As the presidential aide Lee White reported to LBJ, “The Lester Maddox case in Atlanta highlights how really very few businessmen in the South have been unwilling to comply with the law of the land.” The case helped Maddox politically, however, and, in 1966, he won the Georgia governorship on a segregationist platform. Throughout his term, the Atlanta native argued that the federal government was picking on the South but was failing to tackle discriminatory practices in the North.³⁴Close

As the Pickrick case highlights, brave southern blacks were determined to implement Title II. Across the region, African Americans pressed for integrated public accommodations even before the provisions came into effect. In February 1964, for instance, blacks in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, demonstrated to try and force restaurants and hotels to desegregate. In Nashville, Atlanta, Houston, and Memphis, determined blacks also ensured that many public facilities were integrated a few months before the law became effective. Anxious to avoid negative headlines, business leaders often supported these moves. Prior to July 1964, however, any breakthroughs were voluntary, and some business owners went back on their word once demonstrations were called off, usually because of complaints from whites. In May 1963, most of Houston’s restaurateurs had agreed to serve blacks, but, by October, many had reneged because of pressure from their white customers. Title II was crucial because it prevented backtracking. When the law was passed, however, there was still a lot of work to be done. In March 1964, a thorough survey of the region by Johnson’s staffers found that many cities remained substantially segregated, particularly in the Deep South states of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. Even outside this area progress was uneven; in Greensboro, North Carolina, for example, lunch counters and restaurants were only “partially desegregated” more than four years after the famous sit-ins.³⁵Close

As soon as the law became effective, blacks sought to test it, and a wide variety of groups were involved. Formed in 1963, the nonprofit Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights under Law arranged for many early tests and represented plaintiffs in cases that arose from them. In 1965, the Washington, DC-based group also opened an office in Jackson, Mississippi, so that it could redress “discriminatory abuses” in the region. In July, for example, the committee filed actions against ten restaurants in Meridian and Canton that refused to serve blacks.³⁶Close

Across the region, little-known grassroots groups also played an important role. In Bogalusa, Louisiana, members of the Bogalusa Voters League conducted tests of public facilities, while in Vicksburg, Mississippi, the Warren County Improvement League demanded the complete desegregation of all city-owned facilities. National groups sometimes supported these efforts. Assisted by the SCLC, blacks in the Mississippi towns of Grenada and Columbia even marched to demand that all public facilities be desegregated.³⁷Close

Mobile provides a fine illustration of broader trends. In 1956, a bespectacled postal employee called John L. LeFlore had established the Non-Partisan Voters League (NPVL), and he led the group for the next two decades. Initially founded when the NAACP was banned in Alabama, the NPVL carried on the local civil rights struggle in Alabama’s second city. Although scholars have largely overlooked it, the NPVL achieved a lot, particularly in the public accommodations area. Between 1964 and 1968, for instance, the league directed desegregation “testins” at 225 restaurants, cafés, motels, and other establishments.³⁸Close The tests started as soon as the law became effective and were sometimes led by LeFlore himself. As early as July 5, 1964, four NPVL members asked for service at the Auto Drive-In Theater and were refused. Others had similar experiences; on July 9, the owner of a chicken restaurant told one NPVL member “that no Negroes ever would be served” in his business.³⁹Close

Despite repeated tests by the NPVL, some whites were slow to come to terms with Title II. As late as September 1967, for example, the manager of the Blue Star restaurant in Saraland turned five black customers away and told them never to come back. As they were ejected, the black group noted that white customers “applauded” the manager’s statement “in a racist spirit of glee.” Because of ongoing white resistance, the NPVL filed more than seventy-five complaints with the Justice Department and initiated seven suits in the federal courts. These efforts secured results; over the course of 1967, six of the cases were settled in the plaintiffs’ favor in federal court. By the end of 1968, the group noted proudly that it had helped bring about “extensive integration of lunch counters, restaurants and motels under Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.”⁴⁰Close

Right across the region, the NAACP played a particularly important role in ensuring that the provisions of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 were fully realized. “The NAACP in the Southeast Region pushed and prodded for implementation of all the new laws,” noted the region’s annual report in 1965. The actions of the North Carolina Conference were typical; it declared 1965 to be the “year of implementation [of the] Civil Rights Act of 1964” and mobilized accordingly. “Every unit of the NAACP in North Carolina must give added meaning to the Civil Rights Act by making the best use of this new law,” urged conference president Kelly M. Alexander in February 1965. “The days, weeks and months ahead call for determined, powerful, and dignified efforts to implement the civil rights law of 1964.” Once generated on the ground, complaints were passed along either to local attorneys or to the association’s legal department in New York City.⁴¹Close

Across the region, this vigilance produced results. As soon as Title II became effective, NAACP branches filled in questionnaires that documented reaction at the local level. Passed on to regional and national leaders, these surveys recorded that most southern businesses were accepting the law, especially in urban areas.⁴²Close While pleased with this progress, campaigners still took action against those businesses and organizations that were not in compliance. In Florida, for instance, several branches secured significant breakthroughs. In 1965, seven NAACP members in Fort Myers brought suit to end segregation in the community’s recreational facilities. As a result, in the following year the city agreed under pressure to implement “complete desegregation.” In the small town of Mulberry, the state field director reported one restaurant to federal agencies because blacks were not being served. As a result, the owners apologized, the restaurant opened its doors to all, and the association’s legal action was dropped.⁴³Close In Georgia, NAACP activists carried out successful desegregation tests in a range of cities, including Atlanta, Albany, and Savannah, and led protests in the few locations where they did encounter sustained resistance.⁴⁴Close

In Mississippi, the state conference responded to Title II by beginning systematic tests to see whether whites in the famously repressive state were obeying the law. On June 22, 1965, for example, Canton’s city parks were “successfully integrated” by local members. In the course of 1965, the women of the Biloxi branch also had lunch in a beachfront restaurant, and members were quietly served in Laurel, Hattiesburg, and Clarksdale. Again, the association took action against establishments that flouted the law, securing important results. As a result of a favorable decision in Hackett v. Kincaid, for example, all public buildings in Clarksdale were desegregated, including city hall. The NAACP lobbyist Clarence Mitchell explained the philosophy behind these actions. “In the association we have always believed that you confront,” he commented in early 1969, “because that’s the only way you can get a test.”⁴⁵Close

The actions of these pioneers were crucial, especially as many blacks were afraid to ask boldly for service at establishments that had always barred them. Within a couple of years, however, blacks traveling to the South were noticing that they now had free access to public facilities.⁴⁶Close The change meant a great deal because all blacks could recall the humiliation they had felt in having to sit at the back of the bus or explain to their children why they could not use white facilities. It was a central theme of Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham City Jail,” one of his most evocative writings.⁴⁷Close Under segregation, explained the Charlotte native Alfred L. Alexander, “you were mentally kept inferior.” Another Charlotte native, Katie Grier, reflected in old age that free access to public accommodations was one of the movement’s most significant achievements. “Well, you could feel comfortable sitting on the bus, you know,” she explained, “and where there was an empty seat instead of going to the back. I remember those days my dad told me to always go to the seat next to the back if it was empty, otherwise, he said, go all the way to the back, and sit down … and you won’t have any problems.”⁴⁸Close

While blacks celebrated, whites reacted very differently. Many now sought to avoid contact with African Americans, even if that meant staying away from familiar bars and restaurants. Realizing that Title II covered only public facilities, some even sought to set up all-white private clubs. “Throughout the South,” noted Time in January 1966, “clubmanship has become the most popular way to avoid compliance with the discrimination-banning public accommodations section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” In 1965, for example, a “private” committee of one thousand took over the movie house in Perry, Georgia, and proceeded to ban blacks. In Jackson, Mississippi, the marble-floored Robert E. Lee Hotel similarly converted itself into a private club rather than accept black guests. Some restaurants also followed suit; in New Orleans, for example, the well-heeled Maylie’s Restaurant now became Maylie’s Club Restaurant. It claimed three thousand dues-paying members, including local judges, lawyers, and business leaders.⁴⁹Close In Mobile, the NPVL also found that many blacks were asked for membership cards at restaurants but that whites were usually served straightaway.⁵⁰Close

Justice Department officials played an important role in tackling these problems. Between July 1964 and January 1966, the department’s lawyers sued seventy-five separate establishments, including several so-called private clubs. Of these, thirty-nine desegregated as a result, while many more backed down when threatened with legal action. Overall, in the eighteen months after the law was passed the Justice Department received 1,645 complaints of discrimination in public accommodation, but around half of these were settled out of court. In one particularly important case, the department’s lawyers sued the owners of Ollie’s Barbecue, a restaurant in Birmingham that refused to seat blacks. Worried that they would lose their white customers if they allowed blacks to sit inside, the restaurant’s owners argued that their business was not involved in interstate commerce and should be exempt from the law. In response, federal attorneys demonstrated that the restaurant purchased much of its food from out of state. In December 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Justice Department’s position, a move that established that Title II was constitutional.⁵¹Close

While most change occurred peacefully, occasionally efforts to desegregate public facilities ended in serious violence. A few incidents brought home the bravery of those who tested compliance and reinforced the law’s limitations in dealing with the most recalcitrant opponents. In January 1966, the black man Samuel Younge Jr. got into an altercation with Marvin Segrest, the elderly white operator of a gas station in Tuskegee, Alabama. When Younge attempted to use the station’s restroom, Segrest drew a gun and ordered him to leave. As an SNCC worker, the twenty-one-year-old student knew how to stand up for his rights. Although he left the premises, Younge later returned and threatened Segrest with a golf club. In return, Segrest shot at Younge, who taunted him as he ran off. His body was later found with a golf club under it. The murder enraged students and faculty at Tuskegee Institute, and their protests helped ensure that Segrest was put on trial within the year. Although the shooting had happened in front of several witnesses, blacks were horrified when a local, all-white jury found Segrest not guilty.⁵²Close

Another serious incident occurred in Orangeburg, South Carolina, where riots erupted in February 1968 after blacks tried to gain access to a bowling alley that still refused to admit them.⁵³Close The owner, Harry Floyd, justified his policy by claiming that he was running a private business. The move rankled students at South Carolina State College, who had to drive thirty-five miles to Columbia to bowl when Floyd’s alley was located just two blocks from campus. On the night of February 5, a demonstration against the bowling alley turned violent as black students clashed with local police. Three nights later, police fire killed three students and injured another thirty-seven. While police and the white press asserted that the students had initiated the shooting, a claim that turned out to be erroneous, blacks argued that they had been the victims of what the SNCC’s H. Rap Brown called “the Orangeburg Massacre.” The white view held sway, and the black student Cleveland Sellers was the only person convicted in connection with the event. As Sellers commented, “The South Carolina press and its white public for the most part seemed to accept the official interpretation and justification of events at Orangeburg.” The disturbances were another indication of how polarized southern whites and blacks were. Visiting the town more than twenty years later, the black writer Tom Dent observed that whites still viewed the protest as “a modern slave rebellion that must be put down as all slave rebellions must be put down, violently and suddenly.”⁵⁴Close

Despite the widespread acceptance of Title II, the Orangeburg violence was a graphic reminder that some businesses were able to evade the law for several years. Shortly after the shooting, however, the Justice Department obtained a restraining order that prevented Floyd from operating the alley on a segregated basis. Many questioned why the federal government had not acted sooner, and the case exposed the existence of staff shortages within the Civil Rights Division. As Attorney General Ramsey Clark admitted, “We had a very, very limited enforcement capability because of manpower—just a fraction of what we needed.” If Clark’s staff had been able to act sooner, three young lives might have been saved.⁵⁵Close

On the evening of March 15, 1965, President Lyndon Baines Johnson gave a landmark address to Congress on the issue of black voting rights. Moved to act by the Selma protests, which he called a “turning point in man’s unending search for freedom,” Johnson introduced a strong voting rights bill and urged all Americans to support it. In an unusually eloquent speech, the former schoolteacher from Texas declared that it was now time to “extend the rights of citizenship to every citizen of this land.” Remarkably, the first southern president in a century openly identified with the civil rights movement and uttered its signature phrase. “Their cause must be our cause too,” he declared. “Because it is not just Negroes, but really it’s all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And-we-shall-overcome.”⁵⁶Close

A few blocks away, Dr. Martin Luther King was watching Johnson’s address on a friend’s television. For close to a decade, King’s SCLC had tried to secure federal assistance, but the results of its efforts had been mixed. Johnson’s speech consequently represented a significant breakthrough; as the SCLC’s C. T. Vivian later commented, “It was a victory like none other, it was an affirmation of the movement.” As King sat quietly in an armchair, aides saw a tear roll down his cheek, an uncharacteristic burst of emotion from the usually composed leader. Sitting next to King, the Alabama native John Lewis was also moved. The student activist had always viewed Johnson as a “politician,” but now he felt that the president was “a man who spoke from his heart, a statesman, a poet.” He wrote Johnson to commend him on his speech. “None will soon forget the force and urgency of your message to Congress,” he declared, “when you expressed the determination of this Nation that no group of citizens should be denied the basic right to a ballot.”⁵⁷Close

Most of the South’s political leaders reacted very differently. As Johnson was applauded, North Carolina senator Sam Ervin sat sulkily with his arms folded. A leading segregationist, Louisiana’s Allen Ellender slumped in his chair and looked miserable. These Democratic senators accused Johnson of abandoning his colleagues from the South. A close friend of the president, Richard Russell went so far as to call LBJ “a turncoat if there ever was one.”⁵⁸Close Having already left the Democrats in disgust, South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond was free to lambaste the address as a “sickening spectacle” and a “real dictatorial performance.” Insisting that it violated states’ rights, Thurmond called the Voting Rights Act “a completely unreasonable piece of legislation.”⁵⁹Close

Many ordinary southerners were also appalled by the speech, which was watched by a record audience of seventy million television viewers. Most insisted that blacks were not qualified to vote in large numbers. “This proposed bill is ridiculous!” wrote Mrs. Percy A. Hauglie from Moncks Corner, South Carolina. “By giving the vote to those who are morally, mentally, and educationally unfit, Johnson is cutting his own throat.… This bill will not satisfy or pacify the Negro. He isn’t interested in his equality—he won’t stop until he has supremacy!” A resident of Hartwell, Georgia, Mrs. John Mark Temples felt moved to write the president. Penning her letter on the night of LBJ’s speech, she insisted that his actions were misguided. “Many [blacks] cannot write their own names,” she claimed. “If they were registered to vote, they have no idea what to vote for. Their votes could be bought by crooked politicians. This is what you’re trying to force—unqualified voters registered to vote simply because they are Negroes!”⁶⁰Close

In Washington, however, Johnson’s moving rhetoric helped speed the passage of the voting rights bill, which eased through Congress without a hitch. On August 6, 1965, the landmark bill was signed into law in the president’s room within the Capitol, the same setting where Abraham Lincoln had freed slaves who had been pressed into military service by the Confederacy. Johnson sat in front of two sculptures of Lincoln as he put pen to paper, telling an audience of more than one hundred that the vote was “the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice.” The significance of the moment was not lost on John Lewis, who had been beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. “The occasion of the signing into law of the Voting Rights Bill of 1965,” he wrote Johnson that night, “is every bit as momentous and significant in the cause of Negro rights as the Emancipation Proclamation or the 1954 Supreme Court decision declaring racial segregation in the Nation’s schools illegal.” In sharp contrast, the televised ceremony caused more anguish for many southern whites. Writing from Travelers Rest, South Carolina, James B. Bramlett was horrified by LBJ’s actions. “It was disgusting,” he claimed, “to see him standing beneath the Statue of Lincoln in his arrogance and dictatorial speech.”⁶¹Close

Not all white southerners shared such views. Out of 106 representatives from the former Confederate states, thirty-one supported the bill, an indication of the diversity of opinion within the region.⁶²Close Most of this backing came from the Upper South, where the black vote had been increasing for some time. When the act was passed, for example, 46.8 percent of adult blacks in North Carolina were registered to vote, compared to just 6.7 percent in Mississippi. After Mississippi, Alabama had the next lowest proportion of black voters (19.3 percent). Even in this state, however, a few brave whites wrote Governor Wallace and urged him to support the new law. “It must be recognized by all that voter requirements have in many instances been so construed in such a manner to keep Negroes off of the registration rolls,” noted Mobile’s Harry E. Kinnane. Even in Alabama, there was a white constituency that was ready for change.⁶³Close

As Kinnane acknowledged, there were many areas where the law was badly needed. In much of the rural South, whites exerted economic pressure on black sharecroppers and laborers to stop them from becoming politically active, while those who did try to register were blocked by racially discriminatory tests. As the Justice Department’s files spotlighted, blacks made up the majority of the population in some Deep South counties, but almost none of them voted. Because discrimination was concentrated in majority-black areas, the Act contained revolutionary political potential. As Newsweek noted, in much of the region the Voting Rights Act promised “to change the very face of southern politics.”⁶⁴Close

In the years immediately after its passage, the Voting Rights Act fulfilled much of this potential. In 1968, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights recorded in its broad-ranging Political Participation report, “The Voting Rights Act has resulted in a great upsurge in voter registration, voting, and other forms of political participation by Negroes in the South. In many areas, there has been voluntary compliance.” Black registration was now more than 50 percent of the voting-age population in every southern state, whereas before the Act was passed this was the case only in Florida, Tennessee, and Texas. The pace of progress was particularly dramatic in the Deep South. In Mississippi, black registration jumped from 6.7 percent on November 1, 1964, to 59.8 percent on December 31, 1967, while, in neighboring Alabama, it increased from 19.3 to 51.6 percent.⁶⁵Close

The positive changes were partly due to the efforts of the attorney general, who moved to implement the act “immediately upon its signing into law.” Even before the bill was passed, Nicholas deB. Katzenbach worked closely with staff from the Civil Service Commission (CSC). The CSC was given the task of training seventy-five examiners and equipping them with all the materials they needed to register new voters in the South. Examiners were also authorized to assist illiterate applicants in completing registration forms. In addition, Katzenbach’s staff conducted an intensive campaign to publicize the law and encourage voluntary compliance. Targeting the worst areas, federal personnel educated southern registrars about the law and promoted acceptance of it.⁶⁶Close

These efforts produced impressive results. Within a week of the act becoming effective, the Justice Department reported, “There has been widespread and encouraging compliance with the new act in a number of counties in which discrimination against Negro applicants was practiced previously.” In many counties, the number of black voters had more than quadrupled in a week. By August 19, over 16,000 new black voters had been registered in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. While this early pace was not sustained, steady gains still occurred over the following months.⁶⁷Close By August 1966, Johnson was able to celebrate “twelve months of historic progress.” In Mississippi, for example, the president noted that the number of black voters had almost quadrupled, from 35,000 to 150,000. Even here, there was clear evidence of a change in attitude, and Johnson acknowledged that most of the gains had come through voluntary compliance. Responding to the law, the state chamber of commerce had declared that “registration and voting laws should be administered fairly and impartially for all,” and other civic and business groups supported this position.⁶⁸Close

As Johnson pointed out, what was occurring was a truly revolutionary shift. Since the late nineteenth century, most blacks in the Deep South had been denied the most basic of democratic rights. Now, elderly men and women were able to exercise the ballot for the first time in their long lives. In the Alabama primary of 1966, the new voters included Willie Bolden, an eighty-one-year-old who was the grandson of a slave. “It made me think I was sort of Somebody,” he commented. As Clarence Mitchell reflected, the 235,000 blacks who voted in the primary represented a watershed. “They turned the corner in the political life of Alabama,” he declared. “Because Alabama has been one of the worst states for Negroes, this means that we have turned the corner for the whole South.”⁶⁹Close

Where there was likely to be resistance, the federal examiners stepped in. Crucially, they acted quickly, sending the message that non-compliance would not be tolerated. The first examiners opened offices just four days after the act came into effect, and, by October 30, they had already listed 56,789 black voters in twenty counties. In December 1965, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights praised the CSC’s administration of the examiner program, calling it “imaginatively planned, vigorously executed and closely supervised.” By December 31, 1967, examiners had been sent to fifty-eight counties in five southern states and had listed over 158,000 new black voters. The Commission on Civil Right’s data also showed that counties in which federal examiners had been present had higher levels of black registration than counties where they had not been. At the end of 1967, for example, examiner counties in South Carolina had a black registration rate of 71.6 percent, but, in nonexaminer counties, the figure was just 50.5 percent. In Alabama, the comparable figures were 59.3 and 45.4 percent, respectively.⁷⁰Close

The example of a few rural counties illustrates how vital the examiners were. In Holmes County, Mississippi, the pace of change was dramatic, the number of blacks who were registered to vote increasing from 20 to 5,844 in December 1967. “Where the examiners are present,” commented the VEP official Marvin Wall, “the registration goes up tremendously almost at once.” By March 1968, examiners had also had a dramatic impact in Lowndes County, Alabama, where not one of the 5,122 voting-age blacks had been registered in the 1964 elections. Just over three years later, however, there were 2,792 black voters.⁷¹Close

Scene of the climatic struggle that led to the act’s passage, Selma also illustrated broader trends well. Mobilized by months of protest, local blacks moved quickly to take advantage of the law; eight days after it became effective, 354 of them had already registered. An examiner stayed in the town for sixty-four days, and, during this time, the percentage of blacks who were registered increased from 9.7 to 60. In the years that followed, the upsurge continued, and the consequences were soon apparent. By February 1968, a black minister was running for mayor, and six blacks were standing for seats on the city council. In the Dallas County sheriff’s office, where the brutal segregationist Jim Clark had held sway, there were soon two black deputies working under Wilson Baker, the moderate who had easily ousted Clark in the 1966 election. In a sharp break with the past, city officials were also now meeting with African American leaders.⁷²Close

Between 1965 and 1968, the number of black elected officials also increased sharply right across the South. When the Voting Rights Act was passed, blacks held just seventy-two of the seventy-nine thousand elected offices in the region, but, within a couple of years, that number had grown to over two hundred. In the 1966 elections alone, twenty blacks were elected to southern state legislatures, an increase of nine, and there were many symbolic breakthroughs. In Macon County, Alabama, for example, Lucius Amerson became the first black sheriff in the South since the Reconstruction era. The black vote also decided the outcome of many elections, including Winthrop Rockefeller’s successful gubernatorial bid in Arkansas. Receiving more than 90 percent of the black vote, Rockefeller defeated the ardent segregationist Jim Johnson in a close race. In 1967, twenty-two African Americans were also voted into office in Mississippi, including Robert Clark, who desegregated the state legislature after a gap of almost a century.⁷³Close

While federal enforcement was important, black agency also played a vital role in bringing about these gains. In the first three years after the act was passed, NAACP branches conducted voter registration drives right across the South. In the summer of 1965, for example, the association initiated a project in Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina that led to over fifty thousand blacks being registered. Branch activists worked alongside the examiners, supplying them with what The Crisis termed “scores of applicants to register.”⁷⁴Close In Alabama, where the NAACP had only just reorganized, its efforts were particularly noteworthy. In June 1965, the new state president, Dr. John W. Nixon, pressed Governor Wallace to do more to assist black citizens who wanted to register. “We are entitled to the right to vote,” he wrote. “Please help us to get this.” Wallace’s staff, however, refused Nixon’s request for a meeting and insisted that all Alabamians were free to vote “upon making appropriate application.”⁷⁵Close

Such efforts were typical of the NAACP’s determined work. In 1968, another election year, the NAACP estimated that it used well over eight million pieces of literature during its voter registration efforts in the region. During May alone, southern branches claimed credit for adding over ninety thousand new voters to the rolls. Members worked closely with the SRC, which provided nearly $80,000 in grants alone. Many southern blacks responded to these efforts because they grasped the importance of the issues involved. As the Charlotte resident Katie McGill recalled, “When we had the right to vote, you know, we encouraged all the black people to go out and vote, because there’s so many people had lost their lives for us to have voting rights.”⁷⁶Close

Other groups also carried out essential work. Between 1965 and 1968, the Mobile-based NPVL registered more than fourteen hundred African Americans as voters. Realizing that poor blacks often found it difficult to get to the board of registrars, league staff provided free transportation to and from the board’s office.⁷⁷Close In other major Alabama cities, the SCLC conducted similar campaigns. In January 1966, the group worked with federal examiners in Birmingham and registered 7,108 new black voters, or nearly 10 percent of all potential black voters in Jefferson County. Writing to the president, CSC chairman John W. Macy paid credit to the SCLC for the astonishing progress, which had occurred in spite of very cold weather. “There is strong evidence of interest and the Southern Christian Leadership [Conference] are exerting influence in the Negro community,” he noted. In Montgomery, the SCLC also worked with federal examiners and quickly registered 8,000 new voters. Overall, the registration drives clearly reinforced the work of the federal examiners. In 1966, for example, a study by the VEP found that the highest rates of black political participation were in examiner counties where a voter registration campaign had also taken place.⁷⁸Close

Despite these gains, there was still considerable resistance to the implementation of the Voting Rights Act. Crucially, blacks still were much less likely to vote than were whites. This was partly because federal examiners were simply not present in most counties; the Deep South states of Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia, for example, together contained 292 counties, and examiners visited only a tiny fraction of these. As early as December 1965, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights called for examiners to be sent to a broader range of locations. In counties without examiners, blacks complained that they confronted difficulties in registering, especially as offices often had very limited opening hours. Those who worked long hours in manual jobs, in particular, found it impossible to register during the day. Although it was a violation of the act, some counties in Alabama and Mississippi also continued to require proof of literacy.⁷⁹Close

Because the federal examiners concentrated on the Deep South, there were complaints from activists in other states. In North Carolina, the black leaders Golden A. Frinks and Reginald A. Hawkins called for examiners to be sent to a number of rural counties where few blacks were registered to vote. In June 1968, Hawkins complained to Attorney General Ramsey Clark that eighty-four of the state’s one hundred counties lacked a full-time registration system. Concentrating on the eastern part of the state, Hawkins also detailed many cases where white officials were reluctant to register blacks. At this time, whites still held all state political offices in North Carolina.⁸⁰Close

Across the region, whites also registered in increased numbers so that they could dilute the impact of the black vote. By the spring of 1968, almost 80 percent of whites in the seven covered states were registered voters, compared to 56.5 percent of blacks. White registration was highest in the Deep South; in Mississippi, over 92 percent of whites were listed, while, in Alabama, the figure was 82.5 percent.⁸¹Close In these states, some political leaders made a conscious effort to increase white registration levels. Declaring that he would fight the “ridiculous voting rights bill,” George Wallace launched a drive to “see that all eligible white people do get out and register to vote.” In the summer of 1965, Wallace wrote many letters to drum up support for the campaign, which he termed a “statewide program.” He argued that it was essential to register whites because the Voting Rights Act was racially inspired legislation that only sought to help blacks.⁸²Close

White politicians used a wide variety of other techniques to weaken black political involvement. Apart from redrawing the lines of legislative districts in order to dilute the black vote, white officials also increased filing fees for candidates, made many elected offices appointive, and refused to certify nominating petitions from black applicants. As a consequence, the number of blacks who won office was very limited, and gains were largely concentrated in small, majority-black communities. By late 1968, the state legislatures in Alabama and South Carolina remained all white, while those in Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Virginia all had just one African American representative. Only in Georgia, where there were twelve black representatives, was the situation substantially different.⁸³Close

Despite the passage of a strong federal law, many blacks remained afraid of becoming politically active, and this fear remained one of the most difficult obstacles for both federal officials and civil rights workers to overcome. As Vice President Hubert Humphrey wrote LBJ in 1966, “Psychological barriers remain a serious deterrent to Negro registration in certain areas.” The CSC also blamed fear for its failure to recruit many black examiners. On July 30, 1965, for instance, just two of the new examiners were black, a telling weakness.⁸⁴Close

In many isolated areas, this fear was justified as whites continued to attack politically active blacks. While such incidents were becoming less frequent, they still occurred with some regularity. In November 1966, for example, local whites wounded Carrie Washington, an NAACP leader in Concordia Parish, Louisiana, who had been encouraging blacks to vote. Around the same time, several other political activists in the parish had their homes bombed. The violence derailed the NAACP’s efforts; as the local leader Alberta Whatley admitted, “The people are just afraid; they’ve been so put down here.” In Political Participation, the Commission on Civil Rights detailed other similar incidents. In Clay County, Mississippi, the manager of a plantation store declared that he would shoot any black people who tried to vote, while in Dorchester County, South Carolina, the home of a politically active African American was burned to the ground in 1967.⁸⁵Close

After 1965, however, economic reprisals became more common than physical attacks, partly because whites realized that violence was likely to provoke federal intervention. In rural areas, whites frequently used their economic dominance to intimidate politically active blacks. In late 1965, for example, eight black families in Wilcox County, Alabama, were evicted after becoming active in an SCLC voter registration campaign. All sharecroppers, many had lived in their modest dwellings since slave times. The local unit of the SCLC responded by trying to gain funding to construct low-income housing in the area, but this distracted staff attention away from voting rights work. In other cases, emerging political leaders were targeted. In 1966, Alvin White Jr. found that he was a victim of reprisals after he ran for election to the school board in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana. White did carpentry work for whites, but, after running for office, his orders dried up. His plight reflected broader problems. As the Commission on Civil Rights explained in one telling passage, “The land and industry in the South are owned almost exclusively by whites. This economic domination of the region together with the history of racial violence previously alluded to, reportedly infects the entire political process in many areas.… In many cases a Negro will not go to the polls or cast his vote in a way that he thinks will offend the white persons who own the land and the industry, and upon whom he is absolutely dependent for his livelihood.”⁸⁶Close

By the end of 1968, it was clear that voting rights would remain an important battleground in the civil rights struggle for many years to come. As the Commission on Civil Rights concluded in that year, the South was “still a long way from the goal of full enfranchisement of Negro citizens.” While it was mindful of ongoing problems, even the commission acknowledged the ground that had been traveled, however. Given that southern blacks had been politically emasculated since the late nineteenth century, the changes wrought by the Voting Rights Act were remarkable. Johnson and his staff were entitled to take some pride in their achievements, even if it took ongoing black activism to realize many of the changes on the ground. “As an experiment in the role of law and democracy in securing the vote,” asserted outgoing attorney general Ramsey Clark in early 1969, “it must be one of the most dramatic of any country at any time.” Considering the initial opposition to Title II, the rapid desegregation of public accommodations was also noteworthy. In both areas, change had occurred because federal officials and black activists had acted quickly and because the regulations themselves were effective. When these elements were not present, the outcomes were very different.⁸⁷Close