More than 99.5% of black students in the South, excluding Texas and Tennessee, still attend all-black schools. Only 2.3% of black students throughout the country attend predominantly white schools.
January
Congress passes the Twenty-fourth Amendment, which prohibits the states from imposing poll taxes as a condition for voting in elections for federal offices. It is ratified by the states the same year.
May
In Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, 377 U.S. 218 (1964), the Supreme Court holds that closing the public schools in Prince Edward County and appropriating public money to support private, segregated education violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
June
The Mississippi Freedom Summer Project begins. Hundreds of student volunteers from across the country move into black neighborhoods in Mississippi to encourage voter registration. On June 21, three civil rights workers� James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner� are reported missing. Their bodies are later discovered in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi.
July
Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and President Johnson signs it on the 2nd. The Act outlaws race and gender discrimination in voting, public accommodations, and employment. Title VI, which prohibits discrimination in education, becomes a major tool of desegregation efforts.
November
Lyndon B. Johnson defeats Barry Goldwater in the presidential election by a margin of 16 million votes. The black vote overwhelmingly supports Johnson and signals the beginning of a fundamental realignment in American politics. Most blacks shift their allegiance to the Democratic party, and over the next thirty years the white South becomes increasingly Republican.
December
On the 4th, President Johnson issues an executive order prohibiting discrimination in federal aid programs.
On the 7th, in McLaughlin v. Florida, 379 U.S. 184 (1964), the Supreme Court strikes down a criminal statute that punishes cohabitation by interracial couples more severely than cohabitation by persons of the same race.
On the 10th, Martin Luther King is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
On the 14th, the Supreme Court upholds Congress’s power to pass Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, 379 U.S. 241 (1964) and Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U.S. 294 (1964).