The Civil Rights Bill of 1964 (Lola Akinsola)

       I chose the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 because I wanted to get deeper into the process of how they signed the bill into a law. I'm surprised they even made the bill. You would think that since the country was run by a bunch of prejudice men, minorities would never have civil rights and there would be nothing that they could do about it because they don't run anything. Minorities were completely powerless in the government yet they still got what they wanted.
      I chose to create a powerpoint presentation as a last resort. I initially wanted to create a video using iMovie but it seems as though my computer has some new version that it much more confusing than the original. I didn't start my project early enough to ask for help or play around with it until I knew how to work it. I feel that podcasts are just as boring as powerpoint presentations but take much more work just to get the same reaction; boredom. I don't do well with Prezi either. It just gets messy when I use it and it drives me crazy. I felt like my only option was a powerpoint so that's what I decided to do.
      The only challenge I had other than figuring out a way to present my information was finding the information. In Google I would type in "Civil Rights Bill of 1964" and get information about civil rights movements and the march on Washington that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led. It was good information to use in my project, but it only filled up a tiny part of my project. What I really needed to find was the process from a bill to a law. Then after getting help I found that I needed to type in "Civil Rights Bill of 1964 congressional debate" to get everything I needed to complete the project.
      If I had to do the project over again, I would definitely create a video. I had a lot of ideas in my mind about how to make the video that would make it interesting. To do this I would have to start the project early. iMovie is tricky so having a lot of time would be necessary to complete the video properly. I would also do more research for my topic. I felt like there were some things that were missing from my project. It seemed too straight forward for there not to be anything else to it. However, like I said, I started the project late so I could only research for so long.
      What the research and investigation told me about the creation process from idea to bill to law was that the only reasons they passed the bill as a law was just to shut the minorities up and get their votes. The nicer they were to the minorities, the greater chance they had of being reelected. That's really all it was about. I think if President Johnson did not sign that bill into a law he would have been a half-term president. One of the people who "supported" the bill was only worried about votes. Plus it seemed as though minorities were becoming more rebellious leading marches, protesting, and boycotting. It would scare me if I was a white person walking down the street looking at angry black people. I would feel like I'm in danger. Passing the bill as a law would calm them down.
      The process of passing the bill was actually just as I expected it to be. Of course there were going to be congressmen who totally disagreed and there were going to be some that were a little bit more understanding and would vote for the bill. I expected people to try and talk the bill down to death in a filibuster. I'm not surprised at all at how the process went.