As a result of these pressures, Eisenhower placed civil rights at the center of his State of the Union address, which he delivered on January 10, 1957. He reiterated the four-point proposal he had submitted to the previous Congress: (1) to create a bipartisan congressional commission to investigate civil rights violations; (2) to create a Civil Rights division in the Department of Justice under a new assistant attorney general; (3) to empower the attorney general to pursue contempt proceedings against anyone who violated civil rights stemming from the Fourteenth Amendment; and (4) to empower
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