Existing comment:
Civil Rights Act of 1957
In 1957 Clarence Mitchell marshalled bipartisan support in Congress for a civil rights bill, the first passed since Reconstruction. Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson opposed Part III, a provision authorizing the attorney general to file civil injunction suits in civil rights cases, where local police denied rights of peaceable assembly by jailing, beating, or orchestrating economic reprisals against citizens attempting to register to vote or protest segregation. The part was omitted as a concession to Southern Democratic senators. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 created a new Commission on Civil Rights to investigate civil rights violations and expanded a small Civil Rights Section into its own Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice headed by an assistant attorney general. |