Jim Crow was regarded as the final settlement, a "return to sanity". The white man thought the same with slavery but that proved to be an erroneous assertion. The Civil Rights Movement and the Poor Peoples Movements success led to the passing of comprehensive civil rights legislation. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 formally abolished the Jim Crow system in public accommodations, employment, voting, education, and federally financed activities. The Voting Rights Act of 1965, an arguably more significant achievement, rendered illegal numerous discriminatory barriers to effective political participation by African-Americans and mandated federal review of all new voting regulations so that it would be possible to determine whether their use would perpetuate voting discrimination. In the next five years, the percentage of African-Americans registered to vote soared. In Georgia, the rate jumped from 27.4 percent to 60.4 percent; in Louisiana 31.6 percent to 60.8 percent, and in Mississippi, 6.7 percent to 66.5 percent. Miscegenation laws were thrown out the books and the black man could suddenly do all common activities that were once considered off limits. Civil rights activist argued that socioeconomic inequality coupled with racism produced crippling poverty and social issues. Activists organized boycotts, picket lines, and demonstrations to attack discrimination in access jobs and the denial of economic opportunity. Conservative whites soon realized there was a major disruption in the nation's racial "equilibrium." They needed a new racial order that could fit to the constraints of the time. The new order would have to be race-neutral as the opposite would be far too conspicuous. A new race-neutral language was developed to appeal to old racist sentiments and was accompanied by a new political movement that vied for "law and order" instead of "segregation forever.
