Compelled by black protest, Congress passed this measure, the first civil rights statute since Reconstruction. It established the US Commission on Civil Rights and the Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice and authorized the attorney general to prosecute violations of persons’ right to vote in federal elections.

Also, it stipulated trials for violators before federal judges with or without juries. This complicated enforcement in the South, where white resistance to the Brown decision was rampant. Still, the commission's public hearings and reports would expose discrimination, segregation, and violence, even as the act legitimized federal intervention to secure equal suffrage.