How many Republicans voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964? A chamber-by-chamber guide

What the civil rights bill of 1964 was and how it reached Congress

The civil rights bill of 1964 is recorded in Congress as H.R. 7152, a broad federal statute that aimed to ban discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and federally assisted programs. The Congress.gov bill page gives the official bill name and legislative history for H.R. 7152 and remains the authoritative online summary for the measure and its enactment as law, Public Law 88-352, after final approval.

When H.R. 7152 completed the congressional process it became Public Law 88-352, and the National Archives preserves milestone materials and the public law citation for the enacted statute.

The authoritative record for who voted for and against the measure is the chamber roll-call transcriptions. The two decisive, final roll calls are the House passage on February 10, 1964 and the Senate final passage on June 19, 1964, and those official roll-call pages list each member and how they voted.

These primary sources are the starting point for any precise count of supporters and opponents in 1964.

Secondary summaries can be useful for quick checks, but the roll-call files name members and record party labels and district or state designations, which are required for chamber-by-chamber tallies.

Researchers and reporters commonly use the Congress.gov bill page and the National Archives milestone documents together to confirm the bill title, its public law citation, and the dates of key votes.

House vote: how many Republicans opposed the civil rights bill of 1964

The House final tally on H.R. 7152 was 290 in favor and 130 opposed. The Clerk of the House roll-call files record that outcome and provide the definitive list of how each Representative voted on February 10, 1964.

Party-level breakdowns drawn from the official House records show that 138 House Republicans voted yes and 34 House Republicans voted no on the final passage, a party minority in opposition under the numerical count reported by the Clerk.

Those numeric totals are not summaries alone. The Clerk’s roll-call page names each Representative, their party label, and their district, allowing anyone to verify the 138 yes and 34 no counts by consulting the primary XML or transcript of Roll Call 42.

Which Republicans voted no in the House: reading the roll-call record

To list the specific House Republicans who voted no, use the Clerk of the House roll-call XML or the public transcript for Roll Call 42. The roll-call entry for each member contains fields such as member name, state and district, party label, and vote code.

Open the roll-call XML and search the vote elements for the code that corresponds to a no vote; the XML fields make it straightforward to extract the names and party labels without manual transcription errors.

When converting a roll-call entry to a sentence for publication, copy the member name and party label exactly as shown and link to the official roll-call page to allow readers to verify the entry directly.

Avoid recreating a list from memory or from secondary summaries. The primary roll-call file is the authoritative source for each ‘no’ vote in the House and eliminates ambiguity about district numbering or party labels in historical records.

Senate final passage and Republican opposition to the civil rights bill of 1964

The Senate approved final passage of the civil rights bill by a vote of 73 to 27 on June 19, 1964, and the Senate Historical Office summarizes that vote and the roll-call context for final passage.

Most of the ‘no’ votes in the Senate were cast by Southern Democrats, with a smaller number of Republicans recorded among the opponents; the Senate roll-call materials list each Senator and how they voted in the final tally.

Senate roll-call transcripts and the Senate Historical Office notes remain the authoritative references for the names and party labels behind the numerical 73 to 27 result.

Which Republicans voted no in the Senate and the most-cited example

The Senate roll-call list is the primary source for identifying which Republicans voted no. To name individual Senators, consult the official Senate roll-call transcript for the June 19, 1964 final passage and use that primary list for exact spellings and party labels.

One frequently cited Republican opponent is Senator Barry Goldwater, who is documented in the Senate roll-call records as voting against final passage and whose vote has been widely noted in historical summaries of the 1964 Senate action.

When naming a senator who voted no, include the exact citation to the Senate roll-call page so readers can confirm the entry in the official transcript rather than relying on secondary lists or shorthand summaries.

Using the primary Senate roll call also helps avoid errors such as mislabeling party affiliation or confusing votes on amendments with the final passage vote.

Party-level patterns: Republican opposition versus Democratic opposition on the civil rights bill of 1964

Across both chambers the pattern in the roll-call data shows that Republican opposition was a minority within the party, while Democratic opposition constituted the larger share of ‘no’ votes, particularly from Southern Democrats.

The House and Senate roll-call records are the empirical basis for that assessment, and historians and analysts rely on those recorded vote patterns when describing where opposition was concentrated in 1964. See constitutional rights resources for related context.

Those party-level patterns are visible when researchers aggregate the named votes from the official roll calls and compare the party labels and regional origins of members who voted no.

How historians interpret Republican ‘no’ votes and the political realignment that followed

Historians often link the 1964 roll-call patterns to longer term regional and party shifts, arguing that the alignment of opposition in the roll calls helped accelerate a political realignment over subsequent decades.

Such interpretations draw on the roll-call evidence together with broader archival and electoral data, but they stop short of claiming that any single vote was solely responsible for the realignment.

Open questions for scholars include the degree to which individual motives, campaign rhetoric, and local electoral incentives shaped particular ‘no’ votes, and those questions require qualitative archival work beyond the numeric roll-call tallies.

Common reasons contemporaries gave for opposing the civil rights bill of 1964

Contemporary statements and institutional summaries record that frequent reasons opponents cited included appeals to states’ rights and constitutional concerns about expanded federal enforcement authority.

Opponents also raised practical concerns about how federal enforcement would be implemented and what powers the new law would grant to federal agencies, and those rationales are documented in the Congressional Record and in institutional overviews of the debates.

Because motive varies by member, the safest way to attribute a reason to a specific Representative or Senator is to cite the member’s own statement in the Congressional Record or a contemporaneous, sourced public statement rather than inferring motives from a recorded vote alone.

How to find and cite the primary roll-call records yourself

For citation in journalism or research, include the repository name, the date of the roll call, and the roll-call identifier, and provide a direct link to the primary roll-call page so readers can verify the data themselves. Additional coverage and updates are available in the news section.

When reporting totals or naming members, check both chamber roll calls and use the named primary files as the authority rather than depending solely on aggregated secondary summaries.

Typical reporting mistakes when describing who opposed the civil rights bill of 1964

A common error is to confuse amendment votes or earlier procedural tallies with the final passage roll call; the final passage roll calls on February 10 in the House and June 19 in the Senate are the authoritative outcomes for who voted yes or no on the bill itself.

Another frequent mistake is attributing motives to a member based solely on their recorded vote; motive attribution should be supported by the member’s own statement or the Congressional Record entry for that member.

To avoid counting errors, use the primary roll-call XML or transcript rather than transcribing names from memory or from unsourced secondary lists.

Practical example: reading a roll-call entry for a Republican ‘no’ vote

A typical roll-call entry includes fields for the member name, party label, state or district, and a vote code that indicates yes, no, or present. Read each field exactly as printed to avoid transcription errors.

To turn an entry into a short attribution, write a sentence such as, The House roll call shows Representative X of Y voted no on H.R. 7152, and link directly to the roll-call page so readers can verify the entry in the official transcript.

Always double-check party labels and district numbers in the primary transcript before publishing, since historical records sometimes use older district numbering or different institutional shorthand that modern readers might misinterpret.

Where to link or cite official sources when reporting on the civil rights bill of 1964

For verification and transparency, link to the Congress.gov bill page for H.R. 7152, the Clerk of the House roll-call entry for Roll Call 42, and the Senate Historical Office roll-call material for the June 19 final passage; these are the primary pages readers and editors should be able to consult. See About for site context.

It is also useful to include the National Archives milestone document on the Civil Rights Act for context on enactment and the public law citation, while treating reputable secondary summaries as quick reference rather than the final authority.

When possible, provide direct links in online reporting to the specific roll-call pages you used so readers can confirm the names, party labels, and vote codes themselves.

Summary: how many Republicans voted against the civil rights bill of 1964 and why that number matters

Directly, the House roll call shows 34 House Republicans voted no on final passage and the Senate roll call records a smaller minority of Republican opposition in the 73 to 27 Senate final vote; those chamber-by-chamber counts are based on the official roll-call transcriptions.

Those counts matter because they show that Republican opposition in 1964 was a minority within the party, while much of the recorded vote opposition came from Southern Democrats, a pattern visible in the official roll-call records and used by historians when discussing later party realignments.

When reporting or researching these votes, rely on the primary House and Senate roll-call transcriptions for precise counts and names, and avoid inferring motive without sourcing a member’s own contemporary statement or the Congressional Record.