Progress Towards Civil Rights in the 1960s & 1970s

Women and minorities made enormous gains in the 1960s and 1970s thanks largely to an ever increasing outcry among those groups for reform and an every increasing willingness to listen on the part of politicians. By the 1960s, so many people spoke out against the injustice of institutional prejudice that the federal government had little recourse but to grant those rights which so many people so vehemently demanded. At the same time, a growing number of politicians either genuinely believed in equal rights or realized that it was useless and dangerous to continue resisting reform.

Although earlier American President had taken steps towards reform, President John F. Kennedy became an especially important figure in helping ensure that all Americans received equal treatment under the law. In 1961, he established an advisory counsel called The President's Commission on the Status of Women to report to him what many of the leading philanthropists and women's rights advocates thought should be done to promote gender equality in the United States. Based on the recommendations of the counsel, Kennedy equal pay act two years later to deal with the gender gap between what men and women were paid for the same work.

After Kennedy's assassination President Johnson continued to reform. Thanks to a growing public awareness of the injustice of segregation and institutional discrimination brought about by activists like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the first two years of Johnson's administration saw the passage of four civil rights acts. These and other acts forbade segregation in public places, discrimination in the workplace, discrimination in housing, and measures like literacy tests designed to keep minorities from voting. Subsequent legislation also ensured that the federal government had the right to oversee voting districts to ensure that they complied with the new voting and civil rights laws.