Civil rights movement

==== Civil Rights Act of 1968 ====
The [[United States House of Representatives|U.S. House of Representatives]] had been deliberating its Fair Housing Act in early April, before King's assassination and the aforementioned [[King assassination riots|wave of unrest]] that followed, the largest since the Civil War.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.temple.edu/tempress/chapters_1800/2148_ch1.pdf |title=Peter B. Levy, "The Dream Deferred: The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and the Holy Week Uprisings of 1968" in ''Baltimore '68: Riots and Rebirth in an American city'' (Temple University Press, 2011), p. 6 |access-date=December 29, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924123559/http://www.temple.edu/tempress/chapters_1800/2148_ch1.pdf |archive-date=September 24, 2015}}</ref> Senator [[Charles Mathias]] wrote:

{{blockquote|quote=[S]ome Senators and Representatives publicly stated they would not be intimidated or rushed into legislating because of the disturbances. Nevertheless, the news coverage of the riots and the underlying disparities in income, jobs, housing, and education, between White and Black Americans helped educate citizens and Congress about the stark reality of an enormous social problem. Members of Congress knew they had to act to redress these imbalances in American life to fulfill the dream that King had so eloquently preached.<ref name="huduser.org" />}}

The House passed the legislation on April 10, less than a week after King was murdered, and President Johnson signed it the next day. The [[Civil Rights Act of 1968]] prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, and national origin. It also made it a federal crime to "by force or by the threat of force, injure, intimidate, or interfere with anyone...by reason of their race, color, religion, or national origin."<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-82/pdf/STATUTE-82-Pg73.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140716002812/http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-82/pdf/STATUTE-82-Pg73.pdf |archive-date=2014-07-16 |url-status=live|title=Public Law 90-284, Government Printing Office}}</ref>