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While Johnson was a product of the South and a protege of segregationist Senator Richard Russell Jr., as President, Johnson appeared to turn his back on the beliefs espoused by many white southerners of that era. Johnson was said to have been personally sympathetic to the Civil Rights Movement for a long time. Following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and a number of racially motivated atrocious crimes committed in southern states against African-American victims, Johnson felt that the time had come to pass the first major civil rights bill since the Reconstruction Era.
President Kennedy had submitted a civil rights bill to Congress in June 1963, but it was met with strong opposition from southern white politicians. Kennedy's bill had gotten through the House Judiciary Committee, but was met by opposition in the House Rules Committee and the Senate. These were the same delay tactics that had prevented civil rights legislation from passing during many previous administrations. Southern congressmen and senators used congressional procedures and filibusters to prevent it from coming to a vote.
Since 1954, the chairman of the House Rules Committee was Representative Howard W. Smith of Virginia. Smith was an opponent of racial integration, and he had successfully used his power as chairman to keep several civil rights initiatives from coming to a vote on the House floor. In order for Johnson's civil rights bill to reach the House floor for a vote, the president needed to find a way to circumvent Smith's obstruction. On January 8, 1964, Johnson began his State of the Union address by publicly challenging Congress. He said, "Let this session of Congress be known as the session which did more for civil rights than the last hundred sessions combined."
Once known as the "Master of the Senate", Johnson then began to try to build support among House members in order to get the bill out of Smith's committee and onto the House floor. Johnson enlisted his friends in Congress from both sides of the aisle to persuade uncommitted Republicans and Democrats to support the petition. Faced with this pressure, the House Rules Committee approved the bill and moved it to the floor of the full House.
Once the bill was before the House of Representatives, it was passed on February 10, 1964, by a vote of 290–110. But before the bill's passage, Smith proposed an amendment that added protection from gender discrimination to the bill. Smith believed that this would delay the bill. He was wrong. The House still voted to approve the bill. 152 Democrats and 136 Republicans voted in favor of it. The majority of the opposition came from 88 Democrats representing states that had seceded during the Civil War.
Johnson next convinced Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield to put the House bill directly into consideration by the full Senate. This bypassed the Senate Judiciary Committee, which at the time was chaired by Mississippi segregationist James Eastland. Anti-civil rights senators were left with the filibuster as their only remaining tactic to impede the bill. Overcoming the filibuster required the support of over 20 Republicans, who were growing less supportive due to the fact that their party appeared to be about to nominate a candidate for president a candidate who opposed the bill (Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater). But Mansfield and Senator Hubert Humphrey led the effort to pass the bill in the Senate. In order to do so, one of their major tasks was to convince Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen and other Midwestern conservative Republicans to support the bill it.
Johnson and Dirksen reached a compromise in which the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's enforcement powers were weakened. This was initially met with opposition from civil rights groups, but they still supported the bill. After months of debate a fillibuster, the Senate voted for closure in a 71–29 vote. To win this vote, 67 votes (2/3 of the Senate) were needed to break filibusters. Once again, most of the opposition came from southern Democrats. The 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater and five other Republicans also voted against the bill.
On June 19, the Senate voted to 73–27 in favor of the bill, sending it to the president. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law on July 2. According to one account of the bill signing, as he put down his pen Johnson told an aide, "We have lost the South for a generation". Whether or not Johnson said this, he was right. Southern whites switched allegiances against Johnson's Democratic Party and changed their voting pattern to the Republican Party.
The act banned racial segregation in public accommodations. It banned employment discrimination on the basis of race or gender, and it strengthened the federal government's power to investigate racial and gender employment discrimination. The law was later upheld by the Supreme Court.
According to one Johnson biographer, Johnson appealed to contempt for a number of racially motivated injustices as a means of attracting support for the bill. Johnson's argument was paraphrased as follows: "How could individuals who fervently, continuously, and overwhelmingly identified themselves with a merciful and just God continue to condone racial discrimination, police brutality, and segregation? Where in the Judeo-Christian ethic was there justification for killing young girls in a church in Alabama, denying an equal education to black children, barring fathers and mothers from competing for jobs that would feed and clothe their families? Was Jim Crow to be America's response to "Godless Communism"?
That same year, as the fight for passage of this bill was taking place in the Senate, a case was being heard in the United States Supreme Court, the aptly named Loving v. Virginia. It involved an interracial couple, 17-year-old Mildred Jeter, who was African-American, and her sweetheart, 23-year-old white construction worker, Richard Loving. They challenged the state of Virginia's 'miscegenation' laws banning marriage between blacks and whites. After marrying in Washington, D.C. and returning to their home state in 1958, the couple was charged with unlawful cohabitation and jailed.
The Lovings left Virginia and went to live with relatives in Washington, D.C. When they returned to visit family five years later, they were arrested for traveling together. Inspired by the civil rights movement, Mildred Loving wrote to Johnson's Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy for help. The couple was referred to the ACLU, which represented them in the landmark Supreme Court case, Loving v. Virginia (1967). In a decision released on June 12, 1964, the Court ruled that state bans on interracial marriage were unconstitutional. June 12th is fondly remembered by many as "Loving Day". “Loving,” a film celebrating the real-life courage and commitment of Richard and Mildred Loving (portrayed by Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga), opened in theaters last year on November 4 and is now available on video.