Civil Rights Act of 1957: What It Did, Where It Fell Short

The Civil Rights Act of 1957, signed by President Eisenhower on September 9, 1957, was the first federal civil rights law Congress had passed in 82 years.{¹}{²} It focused almost entirely on voting rights, and it did four concrete things: it created the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, it established the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, it gave the Attorney General authority to sue over racial interference with voting in federal elections, and it set procedures for handling contempt of federal court orders in those cases. Its direct enforcement power turned out to be modest. Its institutional legacy did not.

What the Law Actually Did

Created the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights

The act established the Commission on Civil Rights as an independent, bipartisan body in the executive branch.{³} Its charge was to investigate complaints from citizens who alleged they had been denied the right to vote because of race, color, religion, or national origin, and to study broader legal questions about equal protection. It was a fact-finder, not an enforcer. It could subpoena witnesses and documents, hold public hearings, and submit reports to the President and Congress, but it could not order anyone to change their behavior.

The Commission’s first major report, submitted to Congress in 1959, documented widespread disenfranchisement across the South, with state-by-state analyses of registration barriers and findings from field hearings in Alabama and Louisiana.{⁴} Those findings shaped the follow-up legislation of 1960 and 1964. The Commission itself was originally temporary and required periodic reauthorization; the United States Commission on Civil Rights Act of 1983 put it on permanent footing, and it still operates today.{⁵}

Created the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department

Before 1957, civil rights work at the Justice Department was handled by a small section inside the Criminal Division. The act created a new position, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, to head a dedicated Civil Rights Division.{³} It was the first time the department had an official at that level devoted specifically to civil rights.{⁶} The Division still exists and now enforces federal statutes prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, sex, disability, religion, familial status, national origin, and citizenship status.{⁷}

Gave the Attorney General Authority to Sue Over Voting Interference

The core substantive provision of the act, originally codified at 42 U.S.C. § 1971 and now found at 52 U.S.C. § 10101, prohibited anyone from intimidating, threatening, or coercing another person to interfere with their right to vote in federal elections.{⁸} It reached both government officials acting in their official capacity and private individuals, and it applied to primaries, general elections, and special elections for President, Vice President, and Congress.{⁹}

The law also barred election officials from applying different standards to different voters within the same jurisdiction. A registrar could not require a literacy test of Black applicants while waiving it for white applicants. That mattered because registrar discretion was the mechanism through which many southern voter qualification tests operated.

Most significantly, the Attorney General could now file civil suits on behalf of the United States against violators, seeking injunctions and restraining orders before an election rather than prosecuting afterward. Individual citizens no longer had to sue local officials themselves. The litigation burden shifted to the federal government.

Set Contempt and Jury Trial Procedures

Federal district courts got jurisdiction over these cases without any requirement to exhaust state or local remedies first. If someone violated a federal court injunction, the judge could try the criminal contempt without a jury, but with a threshold: if the sentence exceeded a $300 fine or 45 days in jail, the defendant could demand a new trial before a jury.{⁶} The maximum contempt penalty under the act was a $1,000 fine, six months in jail, or both.

This was a compromise. Supporters of the bill wanted bench trials because all-white southern juries were unlikely to convict officials for blocking Black voters. Opponents insisted juries were constitutionally required for criminal penalties. The thresholds split the difference.{³}

Why the Law Fell Short in Practice

The new tools proved limited. The Commission could investigate but could not protect anyone trying to register. The Attorney General could sue, but each case had to be built from scratch in a particular jurisdiction, and local registrars responded to one lawsuit by inventing new obstacles. Case-by-case litigation could not match the scale of disenfranchisement in the South.{¹⁰}

The numbers were stark. In Mississippi, Black voter registration had reached roughly 22,000 in 1954 but dropped to 12,000 the following year as white resistance intensified. By 1964, seven years after the act’s passage, only 6.7 percent of eligible Black Mississippians were registered.{¹⁰}

What Came Next

Congress returned to the subject with the Civil Rights Act of 1960, which required local election officials to preserve all voting records for at least 22 months after an election and made willful destruction of those records a federal crime carrying up to a $1,000 fine, a year in prison, or both. The 1960 law also authorized federal courts to appoint voting referees who could register qualified citizens directly when a court found a pattern of discrimination.{¹¹}

The real break came with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Where the 1957 law relied on lawsuits filed one county at a time, the 1965 act attacked the problem systemically. It banned literacy tests outright, authorized federal examiners to register voters directly in covered jurisdictions, and required jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to get federal approval before changing any voting practice.{¹²} In Mississippi, Black voter registration jumped from 6.7 percent in 1964 to 59.8 percent by 1967.{¹⁰}

Why It Still Mattered

The 1957 Act did not transform voting rights by itself. Its significance lies in what it built. The Commission created an official federal record of disenfranchisement that Congress could not ignore. The Civil Rights Division gave the Justice Department a permanent institutional home for this work. The voting rights provisions, however narrow in effect, established the principle that the federal government could intervene when states denied citizens the ballot. Both institutions the act created are still operating, and every major civil rights law that followed built on the foundation it laid.

1
United States Senate. The Senate and Civil Rights 1862-1963
2
Office of the Historian, U.S. House of Representatives. The Civil Rights Act of 1957
3
United States Senate. Civil Rights Act 1957
4
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Report of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, 1959
5
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Commission Information
6
Department of Justice. The Civil Rights Act of 1957
7
Department of Justice. Civil Rights Division
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 52 USC 10101 – Voting Rights
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 1971 – Voting Rights
10
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Voting Rights and Political Representation in the Mississippi Delta
11
United States Senate. Civil Rights Act 1960
12
National Archives. Voting Rights Act