In June 1957 Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. The act made it a federal crime to prevent qualified persons from voting. It also established a federal commission on civil rights to investigate discrimination in voting and a civil rights division in the Department of Justice. The act gave the U.S. attorney general the power to prosecute voting violations. Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina held the longest ever personal filibuster—more than 24 hours—in an effort to stop passage of the law, but he failed. In the first three years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the Justice Department had filed some fifty voting discrimination cases.
