Civil Rights Act Of 1964 Case Study

Human Resource Issues Stemming from

The Civil Rights Act of 1964

Turbulent times in the United States of America during the early 1960’s brought great suffrage, hard fought adoption of laws and change to the governance and administration of employees by the personnel department, the fore runner of today’s Human Resource Management (HRM) and Human Resource Development (HRD) departments. Debate over the bill that passed as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 lasted in the Senate 114 days and was considered to potentially have such risky political consequences as to loose support of the Southern states (Remnick, 2014). Interestingly, the original bill did not included the word “sex” but would be added by an amendment only two days before the bill’s passage in the House (Dreiband & Swearingen, 2015). Gender was not considered in the

President John F. Kennedy, is regarded as the president who compelled the civil rights issue as he addressed The Congress of the United States in June of 1963. He pointed out to Congress that street demonstrations, mass picketing and parades brought racial injustices to the American people as he reminded Congress that this was a national domestic crisis which called for bipartisan unity and solutions (Kennedy, 1963). Was Presidents Kennedy’s lack of including the word “sex” to the original bill and oversite, and if so, why was it later added before its passage into law? Additionally, what is the meaning of “gender,” and has it been added to employment law creating a new Title VII (Beyer, Weiss, & Wilchins, 2014)? What ramifications do the coined phrases “sexual harassment” and “gender identity” impart to Human Resource Management and