My history – and a civil rights timeline.  I was a senior at Ponderosa High School in Shingle Springs, CA, when the HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES passed a final version of the Civil Rights Act on February 10, 1964… The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.  Passage of the Act ended the application of “Jim Crow” laws, which had been upheld by the Supreme Court in the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson, in which the Court held that racial segregation purported to be “separate but equal” was constitutional.”