Describe the Civil Rights Act of 1968.

The Civil Rights Act of 1968 was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. Known as the "Fair Housing Act," it expanded on the previous iterations of the Civil Rights Act by basically outlawing discrimination in housing--both sales and rentals as well as mortgage lending--based on race or other factors. It was essentially an attempt to deal with the issue of de facto segregation, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 having explicitly outlawed de jure segregation. It forbade zoning laws, so-called "redlining" and other practices that were used to bar African-Americans and other minorities from living in white-dominated neighborhoods. It also mandated that mortgage lenders not use race as a criterion for extending credit. Its effects were complex, but its most significant unintended consequence was to accelerate the phenomenon of "white flight" from inner cities to the expanding suburbs around urban areas. Meanwhile, millions of African-American families moved into inner cities. Neighborhoods remained segregated in fact if not by law.