Eisenhower signs the first civil rights law since Reconstruction

For eighty-two years, Congress had passed no federal civil rights legislation. On September 9, 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, which had passed the House 285 to 126 in June and the Senate 72 to 18 in August. The law created the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and a new Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, aimed at protecting the voting rights of Southern Black Americans, only about 20 percent of whom were registered to vote. Southern senators, however, had already gutted its strongest enforcement tools before it reached the President's desk…