Statista Reports on The Civil Rights Act, 60 Years Later
(2024-08-26, Boston, MA, Special to the U.S. Times) On July 2, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. Considered one of the most significant legislative achievements in American history, the Civil Rights Act sought to put an end to racial discrimination and segregation of Black Americans following a decade of protesting from the civil rights movement and a series of historic U.S. Supreme Court rulings.
Sixty years later, on July 2, 2024, Statista, a global data and business intelligence platform and research firm, released a series of research reports discussing events leading up to the signing of the Civil Rights Act and examining its legacy.
Our publisher and senior editor, Cirina Catania, spent time with Bob Moses, one of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, first in Jackson Mississippi, then in San Francisco, chronicling the Algebra Project.
He was one of the key founders of the Student Nonviolent Committee (SNCC) and spearheaded what has become known as the “Summer of 64.” Bob has passed away, but his legacy forever changed Civil Rights in our country.
When they opened up the vote in Mississippi, they opened it up for the black community nationwide. Cirina will be writing her experiences in Mississippi in an upcoming article in US Times.
You can see the Democracy Now video tribute and interview with journalist, to Bob Moses here.
Statista data journalist Florian Zandt shares a comprehensive timeline of events that encompassed the civil rights movement, beginning with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, the Supreme Court ruling that declared the segregation of public schools unconstitutional, and ending with the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. This timeline effectively visualizes the hard-fought struggle for equal rights both before and after President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.
In addition, Zandt explores the perspective of those outside the civil rights movement, bringing attention to two surveys conducted in September and October 1964, months after President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. The September study approached several American adults and gauged their general opinion about the recently-signed law. In contrast, the October survey discussed how Americans felt the Civil Rights Act should be implemented and enforced. As indicated by the charts provided by Statista, 59% of Americans approved of the Civil Rights Act, with the remaining 31% disapproving and 10% unsure.
However, when asked about the law’s implementation, most survey participants favored a more gradual adoption over strict enforcement. While this dichotomy of responses could potentially implicate the general attitude Americans had about the movement, it is impossible to know for sure, as Zandt explains, “What that meant in practice or which sections of the act respondents thought should be fully implemented when is unclear since no further questions were asked on this topic at the time.”
Looking to the present day, sixty years after the signing of the Civil Rights Act, Felix Richter, another Statista data journalist, highlights the grim reality that, while there has been progress regarding equality, this country still has a long way to go before the ambitions of civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X are fully realized. Richter elaborates, “Among Black Americans, the view on progress is much more negative with just 30 percent of respondents saying that significant progress has been made and 83 percent thinking that efforts to ensure equal rights have been insufficient.”
A survey conducted in September 2023 emphasizes the continued discrimination and injustice Black Americans face at a systemic level, with one group of survey participants insisting several American institutions discriminate “a great deal” and another feeling they discriminate “a fair amount.” Either way, according to the chart provided by Statista, a combined 74% of Black Americans (59% a great deal and 15% a fair amount) say the United States prison system is designed to hold back black people, with the chart’s other listed systems and institutions not faring any better. The healthcare system has polled the least, with 27% of Black Americans feeling it discriminates “a great deal” and 25% saying it discriminates “a fair amount,” but when combined, that is still more than half of the survey’s 4,736 participants.
For more information, visit Statista’s website and read the reports provided by Florian Zandt and Felix Richter:
https://www.statista.com/chart/32528/share-of-respondents-with-the-following-opinion-on-the-1964-civil-rights-act-after-it-was-signed/
https://www.statista.com/chart/32532/key-events-of-the-us-civil-rights-movement-in-1950s-and-1960s/
https://www.statista.com/chart/32531/systematic-discrimination-in-the-us/