The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was notable for establishing what federal commission in the Justice Department?

• A. National Labor Relations Board
• B. Civil Rights Commission
• C. Food and Drug Administration
• D. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

Answer: (B)

The question is testing how the first major federal move to monitor and report on civil rights violations came about. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 created a federal body called the United States Commission on Civil Rights. This commission was a bipartisan group charged with investigating civil rights abuses and reporting its findings to Congress, giving the federal government a structured way to study and address issues like voting rights attacks in the South. It marked a formal step in federal civil rights oversight beyond what had existed since Reconstruction and laid groundwork for later, broader enforcement efforts.

Think about why the other options don’t fit this act. The National Labor Relations Board is a much older agency focused on union-management relations and wasn’t created by this act. The Food and Drug Administration has its roots in earlier food-and-drug regulation laws and isn’t connected to civil rights enforcement. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was established later, by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to handle employment discrimination. So the Civil Rights Commission is the entity the 1957 act brought into federal structure to study and report on civil rights issues.