Note (Back) — CHAPTER 23

The need for strong civil rights legislation had become increasingly apparent in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education.[23-18] With that decision, the judicial branch finally lined up definitively with the executive in opposition to segregation. But the effect of this united opposition was blunted by the lack of a strong civil rights law, something that President Kennedy had not been able to wrestle from a reluctant legislative branch. The demands of the civil rights movement only underscored the inability of court judgments and executive orders alone to guarantee the civil rights of all Americans. Such a profound social change in American society required the concerted action of all three branches of government, and by 1963 the drive for strong civil rights legislation had made such legislation the paramount domestic political issue. Lyndon Johnson fully understood its importance. "We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights," he told his old colleagues in Congress, "we have talked for one hundred years or more. It is time now to write the next chapter, and to write it in the books of law."[23-19]