When the government defended civil rights "All my life I've been sick and tired, and now I'm just sick and tired of being sick and tired. No one can honestly say that niggers are satisfied. We just had patience, but how much more patience can we have?" Mrs. Hamer spoke these words in 1964, a month and a day before the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. It speaks to the state of mind of a race, a race that for centuries built the American nation, literally, with blood, sweat and passive acceptance. He speaks on behalf of Black Americans who have too long been second-class citizens at home. You speak for the race that would no longer be patient and accepting. Ms. Hamer speaks for the African Americans who rose up and refused to sit down in the 1950s. They were the people who led the greatest movement in modern American history: the civil rights movement. It was a movement that would be more than a fragment of history, it was a movement that would become a measure of our lives (Shipler 12). When Martin Luther King Jr. awakened the conscience of a nation, he gave voice to a long-dormant morality in America, a voice that the government could no longer ignore. The government finally responded on July 2 with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is historically significant because it is a defining element of civil rights legislation, being the first time the national government declared equality for the blacks. The civil rights movement was a campaign led by a number of organizations, supported by many individuals, to end discrimination and achieve equality for Black Americans (Mooney 776). The front line of struggle came during the 1950s and 1960s, when feelings of oppression intensified and efforts to gain access to public housing, greater voting rights, and better educational opportunities increased (Mooney). Civil rights in America began with the adoption of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, which ended slavery and theoretically freed blacks. The Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875 were passed, guaranteeing black rights in the courts and access to public accommodations. These were, however, declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, which established that the fourteenth did not protect blacks from the violation of civil rights by private individuals.