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From the South China Morning Post this week in 1964
The US House of Representatives passed the Civil Rights Bill by 289 votes to 126, ending a long and bitter congressional battle.
President Lyndon Johnson planned to sign the bill into law in a televised ceremony at the White House.
Negro groups planned immediate action to test the new laws.
The Reverend Martin Luther King said he would take white friends to lunch at a restaurant in St Augustine, Florida, where he was arrested a month earlier while trying to integrate it.
Following passage of the bill, most businessmen appeared to be willing to adhere to the new law, but some were prepared to close their establishments rather than admit Negroes.
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