White backlash killed the Civil Rights Act of 1966.

Evidence

Dr. King and movement veterans faced a rising tide of white resentment based on the fear that true justice for black people meant robbing white Americans of something. Throughout the country, in statehouses and within the Beltway of Washington, D.C., some white Americans voiced their deep anxieties about the “lawlessness” of black political demonstrations. Ronald Reagan’s gubernatorial campaign ran ads with footage of riots, a narrator ominously warning, “Every day the jungle draws a little closer.” The series of legal victories that had climaxed with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 came to a grinding halt as white politicians pushed back against further legislation. The Civil Rights Act of 1966, which included, among other things, mandates for diversified juries, a commitment to “open and fair housing,” and protection of civil rights workers, died in the Senate on September 19, the day before King took to his bed. The votes to end a southern filibuster could not be found. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 260

Categorization

• XREF: Gives concrete causal anatomy of value gap as reward/backlash dynamic central to Glaude’s later argument about electoral traps.