Chicago Civil Rights of 1968

CHICAGO CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1968

President Lyndon Johnson signed Chicago civil rights act of 1968 also known as CRA ‘68 on April 11, 1968. This act mainly focuses on providing federal solutions and is also commonly called as Fair Housing Act of 1968. This act is an expansion of previous civil rights act of 1964 and other previous civil rights act and it mainly concentrates on prohibiting the discrimination attached with sale, financial, rental of housing based on race, religion and origin.

The passage of the bill was mainly triggered by the assassination of Martin Luther King a week before. This bill was initially framed to enhance the United States government protection to civil rights workers, but later it was modified and re-designed to stop the discrimination in sale and rental of housing. Martin Luther King, Jr. was main man behind the idea of this bill, the other men who was also really involved in this work is Clarence Mitchell, Jr., the Washington director of the NAACP.

The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. on 9th April, 1968 invoke some nation-wide anguish and it had really strengthened the chances of the bill getting approved in the house. This situation led the house rules committee to send this civil rights bill directly to the house floor and was subjected to only one hour of debate and no amendments can be made, hence this created lots of pressure to pass this strong senate bill and pass it quickly. Chicago civil rights act of 1968 bill was eventually passed on April 10th 1968 (by a vote of 229 to 195) and the president signed the bill next day (11th April 1968).