Two Big Laws

Explain Johnson, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act.

Warm-up, learn, try it together, practice, then a quick check. About 15 minutes.

What children learn in Level 72

Marches changed minds, but laws needed to change too. Lyndon B. Johnson, a Texan, became president in 1963, and pushed Congress hard.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned segregation in hotels, restaurants, and other public places, and banned job discrimination by race or sex. Jim Crow signs came down.
But in much of the South, Black citizens still couldn't vote. In 1965, marchers set out from Selma, Alabama, for Montgomery. Police beat them on a bridge. John Lewis, later a Georgia congressman, was badly hurt.
Americans saw it on television, and they were shocked. Thousands more came to Selma, and the march reached Montgomery. Months later, Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
It ended literacy tests, and sent federal officials to help sign up voters. In Mississippi, Black voter sign-ups rose from under 7 percent to nearly 60 percent in a few years.

Georgia Standards of Excellence in Social Studies:

SS5H6.b — Explain the key events and people of the Civil Rights movement: Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Montgomery Bus Boycott, the March on Washington, Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, and civil rights activities of Thurgood Marshall, Lyndon B. Johnson, Cesar Chavez, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King, Jr.