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July 8, 2004

A Day To Remember

Introduction

The 40th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 slipped by unnoticed by many. That legislation marked the first time it became unlawful anywhere in America to discriminate in places of public accommodation, employment and education because of race.

Sen. Ted Kennedy was in the early days of his long service in the U.S. Senate at the time of the legislation’s enactment, and the Banner is privileged to publish his comments on this important commemoration.

Sen. Ted Kennedy’s Remarks

On July 2, we celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the enactment of the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964. The 57-day Senate filibuster against it was finally defeated with the strong support of Republican Senate Leader Everett Dirksen, who had quoted Victor Hugo, declaring that “Stronger than all the armies is an idea whose time has come.” As the all-important vote neared, Dirksen had said, “Civil rights-here is an idea whose time has come. Let editors rave at will and let states fulminate at will, but the time has come and it can’t be stopped.”

President Kennedy had sent his New Frontier proposal on civil rights to Congress in June 1963. In the year leading up to its enactment, the nation witnessed one of the best and one of the worst events in our modern history. That August, from the steps of the memorial to Abraham Lincoln in Washington, in a speech that moved the nation, Martin Luther King spoke eloquently of his dream of justice and opportunity for all. In September, the savage bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killed four young girls and underscored the urgency of action by Congress.

I was in my first year in the Senate at the time, and I was proud to give my first major speech in the Senate on the bill. The overwhelming demand for greater progress by our country on civil rights was clear to all of us in Congress, from the most senior to the most junior members. Many felt embarrassed that the Supreme Court had been unanimous in its landmark decision outlawing school segregation a decade earlier, while Congress was still AWOL on that defining issue of our time.

Change was inevitable. Passage of the 1964 act had become irresistible. The Senate approved it by a vote of 73-27, and President Lyndon Johnson signed it into law in a ceremony at the White House broadcast on television to the nation. One of the Republican Senators who voted against it was Barry Goldwater of Arizona, whom President Johnson defeated by a landslide in the presidential election four months later.

Although many inequalities still persist today, the Act became a sweeping success. According to the Census Bureau, in 1966, two years after the Act passed, the poverty rate for blacks was 42%. In 2002, it was 24%. In 1964, only 26% of blacks over the age of twenty-five had a high school diploma; in 2002 the figure was 79%. Today, ten times as many African Americans have a college degree as in 1964. The “whites only” signs once common throughout the South are now a distant memory.

Yet our progress, gratifying as it is, should not blind us to the challenges that still exist. Other laws that followed, especially the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, laid a solid foundation, but their presence on the statute books is far from enough. The true challenge is to see that the promise of equal justice and equality of opportunity is fulfilled.

Unfortunately, recent court decisions have undercut the effectiveness of these basic laws by restricting interpretations of civil rights. They have closed the courthouse door to claims of age discrimination by state workers and limited the types of damages available for many violations of civil rights. Courts have held that the 1964 act does not allow individuals to seek help from the courts if federal funds are used in ways that have an unjustified discriminatory effect, unless a specific intent to discriminate is proved. Such rulings have made it more difficult for minorities to challenge excessive siting of hazardous waste dumps in their communities, or school funding formulas that shortchange minority schools.

Similar problems continue to plague us in other areas. Pay disparities disadvantage women and minorities in the workplace. Racial profiling is a shameful but prevalent police tactic. The promise of full funding for the No Child Left Behind Act is broken every year. There can be no greater commemoration of this auspicious anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than to rededicate ourselves to equal rights as the unfinished business of America.

 

 

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