Would the Civil Rights Act Have Been Passed Under JFK?

I've seen debate over whether or not the Civil Rights Act would have been passed had JFK never been assassinated. Some historians say yes, others (who are more partial to LBJ) say no. But what is more likely? Would the act still have passed had JFK lived?
 
Some action is probably done in some capacity, but it’s vague and mostly powerless like the ones in 1957 and 1960. Nowhere close to the extent of the three civil rights reforms under LBJ at least. It was such a big wedge issue that it took 80-100 years after the Civil War for anything meaningful to get going... “and now a Northern Yankee like Kennedy wants to tell us how to operate?” But to elaborate further, what does an America where the Civil Rights Act never passed look like?

I would say it’s likely that nonviolent moderates in the movement such as MLK are even more discredited by 1968, seeing as after nearly two decades of activism forms of legalized discrimination in employment, voting, and housing still exist on a large scale. Radical black power leaders (perhaps a still-living Malcolm X?) are empowered instead, because why let themselves get beaten by police forces without retaliation when that method hasn’t amounted to anything? Riots like in Watts, the Long Hot Summer of 1967, and after MLK’s death OTL are multiplied in frequency and damage.

In turn, this enables certain politicians like the Dixiecrats to fear-monger and ask, “You see what’s happening as it is? Do you really those rioters having the same voice as you in elections, or sharing establishments?” After a decade of escalation, most are probably ready to agree, and to an extent they already did with Nixon’s silent majority. Except by now the person elected in 1968 isn’t someone coy about the issue like Nixon, and instead is an open segregationist akin to Wallace.

All of this makes the prospects of any reforms in the near future political suicide in many cases, and having been oppressed and discriminated against for so long, African-American leaders opt to seriously push for their own country in the 1970s. It’s a racial nationalist’s dream, and a nightmare for everyone else. I really think it had to be a Southern Democrat like Johnson to pull it off, because he had just the right amount of sway and legitimacy (and national support after 11/22) to foster enough comfort with the idea of civil rights. If even with all of those factors the 1960s became unstable, JFK not doing as much as LBJ did would be so much worse.
 
Top