Civil Rights Act of 1960
By the late 1950s, the Civil Rights Movement had been pressuring Congress to enact legislation to protect the constitutional civil rights of African Americans. The first major piece of civil rights legislation passed by Congress was the Civil Rights Act of 1957. While enforcing the voting rights of African Americans set out in the Fifteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, the act had several loopholes. Southern states continued to discriminate against African Americans in application of voter registration and electoral laws, in segregation of school and public facilities, and in employment.
History of slavery in Texas
African Americans immediately started raising legal challenges to disfranchisement, but early Supreme Court cases, such as "Giles v. Harris" (1903), upheld the states. Through organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), African Americans continued to work to regain their ability to exercise their civil and voting rights as citizens. The civil rights movement led to the U.S. Congress and President Lyndon Johnson passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which protected the rights of all citizens to integrated public facilities and enforcement of voting rights.