Answer:
Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in 1875, which in line with the Reconstruction Amendments granted African Americans equal civil and political rights with whites. Still, in 1964, as a result of the Civil Rights Movement, it had to pass a similar law, reaffirming this equality of rights. This was so because, beginning in 1877, when Reconstruction came to an end and the Democrats regained their power in the southern states, many southern legislatures began to pass laws restricting the rights of blacks, known as Jim Crow Laws.
Thus, for years, the equality raised by 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments between African Americans and whites was fictitious in the South. There, white rulers continued to curtail their rights for decades, until in the 1950s with the emergence of African American leaders such as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and many others, the black population of the southern United States began to demand real equality of rights, which motivated in 1964 the approval of the Civil Rights Act.
