The 1964 Civil Rights Act The 1964 Civil Rights Act was historically important piece of legislation which improved the quality of life for African Americans and other minority groups. Even though civil rights had a long history as a political and legislative issue, the 1960s marked a period of intense activity by the federal government to protect minority rights. The 1964 Act did not resolve all problems of discrimination, but it did opened the door to further progress by decreasing racial restrictions on the use of public facilities, voting laws, providing more job opportunities, and limiting federal funding of discriminatory aid programs. The Act also examines and provides us with a way to understand the climate regarding African American rights, the nature of civil rights activity, the barriers to political and social change, the role of politics in the way issues are handled, the actions of individual senators and representatives, and the nature of legislative activity in general; and the combination of this factors is a complicated process which made the bill to become a law. The civil rights legislation picked up its speed after 1945 as a result of black migration to northern cities and the experiences of black soldiers in World War II. The years followed World War II in the America, brought a period of economic prosperity for many Americans. The strong economy allowed the workers found themselves able to use their income to pay for new homes and services that had been unheard of for prior generation. However, not all American residents shared equally in the prosperity, and white Americans had many benefits that were unavailable to people of color. Segregation prevented them from using a variety of public facilities on an equal basis with whites. African Americans were restricted in their use of public city buses, park facilities; the water fountains and municipal swimming pools bore signs indicating that their use was restricted by race; and the drugstore and restaurants refused to serve people of color. In the same mode, public schools allow student participate not on the basis of their residence, but rather on the basis of their race. The education provided in the schools attended by white children was different from provided to black children. Students of color had fewer choices to attend college then white student with equal ability. As late as 1963, for example, only 12,000 of the 3,000,000 African Americans in the South attended integrated schools, in spite of the Brown decision. Housing also was restricted, the white landlord and home owners refused to rent or sell their homes to people of color; the neighborhoods in many part of the country were segregated. During the 1950s, African American began to protest more publicly and actively as they demanded comprehensive protection of their civil rights. African American protesters pointed to a number of social inequalities from which they suffered, and they believe in increasingly upon direct action to publicize their plight by arranging demonstrations and boycotts. Perhaps the most dramatic of the early protests was Martin Luther King, demonstration in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955. Protesting rules that required them to sit in the backs of buses, African Americans refused to use public transportation and picketed against the rule. The protest soon spread as African Americans boycotted white Montgomery businesses in order to slow down business and to force businessmen to support their request. After months of conflict and some violence, the city agreed to end seating requirements on buses, signaling a symbolic victory for civil rights workers in the South, and similar protests grew up throughout the South. The steps of social protest increased dramatically in the four years before passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In February 1960, African American students demonstrated against segregation at a department store lunch counter in Greensboro, North