CLEP US History II

Answer: E - A nonviolent protest in Birmingham, Alabama, during Spring 1963 was met with such police brutality that television coverage of the event prompted President John F. Kennedy to adopt a more progressive stance on civil rights. His support for the cause mounted slowly before and during his presidency, but as late as 1962, he wanted to leave the matter to the courts to address through judicial enforcement of laws banning segregation and voter disenfranchisement, as well as through enforcement of general laws prohibiting violence. However, after viewing the severity of the racially motivated violence in the South, as the police turned water cannons and police dogs on citizens who were demonstrating peacefully, he decided to pursue a more aggressive course of action by proposing the Civil Rights Act (which later had “of 1964” added to its name, for the year of its congressional passage). Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, before the bill was passed.