U.S. Civil Rights Act's victories at risk, say leaders on 60th
anniversary
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[July 03, 2024]
By Bianca Flowers, Kat Stafford and Allende Miglietta
(Reuters) - Courtland Cox was 22 years old when he stood alongside civil
rights icons Bayard Rustin and John Lewis at the March on Washington in
1963, joined by thousands of other Black Americans, including students
Cox organized, who arrived on charter buses from the South.
The march is credited with shifting the tide for social rights in the
United States, paving the way for the Civil Rights Act signed into law
60 years ago today.
Then, many Black Americans, who were generations removed from the end of
slavery, nonetheless faced the threat of violence and "Jim Crow" laws
that prohibited them from voting and from living in housing among their
fellow citizens.
Activists in the 1950s and 1960s responded with an escalating series of
nonviolent demonstrations, including the March on Washington led by the
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The events drew public attention to Black
citizens' plight and paved the way for landmark laws, including the
Civil Rights Act, signed on July 2, 1964, by then-President Lyndon B.
Johnson.
Cox, now 83, said the fight is as urgent today as it was when he was a
young activist. "We have an ongoing battle that's been going on for 80
years," Cox said.
Decades after the bill's passage, some of the nation's leading civil
rights leaders and organizations say its full promise – and the hope it
instilled – remains unrealized after a series of rollbacks in rights in
recent years.
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Advocates said a recent litany of court rulings have had a chilling
effect on Black Americans, including U.S. Supreme Court decisions over
the past 11 years that have gutted a core part of the Voting Rights Act
of 1965, overturned Roe v. Wade abortion rights and made it harder to
prove racial discrimination in the administration of elections.
Voters are further frustrated by inflation and other pocketbook issues
and a lack of progress on racial justice priorities.
"We are treading on very dangerous waters," said Martin Luther King III,
son of the assassinated civil rights icon. "Our task is to get the
majority of people to engage. Dad used to say, 'We must learn
non-violence or we may face non-existence.' We are headed in the wrong
direction and we have to find ways to pull those people out to come out
on Election Day."
The Civil Rights Act anniversary may well be a cause for celebration but
a feeling persists that the historic legislative victories for Black
civil rights are under threat.
"The past eight years has taught us that all of the things that we
thought were codified in law and sacred, and that they were part of this
kind of historical narrative about justice - all of those things can be
undone," said Leah Wright Rigueur, a history professor at Johns Hopkins
University.
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![](../images/070324PIX/news_g15.jpg)
Civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr. (3rd from R
front row) and John Lewis (4th from L front row), talk with
reporters after meeting with President John F. Kennedy after the
March on Washington in Washington, U.S., August 28, 1963. Library of
Congress/Warren K. Leffler/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
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Black Americans voted 9-to-1 for Biden in 2020. Black Americans have
favored Democratic candidates in presidential elections since the
civil rights era. But recent Black voter support for Biden has waned
in part because some voters feel disillusioned about slow progress.
Advocates are hoping to use this moment to push Black Americans to
fight for their rights by voting in the November election between
Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican candidate Donald
Trump.
SIGNS OF PROGRESS
Cox celebrates the substantial political influence Black Americans
have gained since the era when he joined the civil rights movement.
At the age of 19, he was prompted to do so by Emmett Till's murder a
few years prior. The 14-year-old Till was abducted and murdered in
Mississippi by two white men, who were eventually acquitted.
He remains engaged in activism – currently collaborating with the
NAACP civil rights group to recruit 300,000 volunteers in
get-out-the-vote efforts targeted at Black communities.
The National Urban League, another leading civil rights
organization, is fighting what it views as racially targeted voter
suppression tactics such as strict voter ID laws, polling closures
in predominantly Black neighborhoods, early voting limits and voter
roll purges.
"We sometimes take democracy for granted because we never lived
without it, so we become detached from this hard reality," said
National Urban League CEO Marc Morial.
Meanwhile, the next generation of political leaders and advocates
hope to use what they've learned from prior generations, like recent
Tougaloo College graduate Blaise Adams. The Mississippi college was
at the forefront of the civil rights movement, serving as a
gathering place for noted activists like King, Medgar Evers and
Fannie Lou Hamer.
"One of the biggest things that we've learned from that era is the
power of the collective voice," said Adams, 34, Tougaloo's former
student government president.
"Our ancestors fought for this right. People that were killed in the
streets, attacked and everything like that, for the ability for us
to simply go and vote."
(Reporting by Kat Stafford, Bianca Flowers and Allende Miglietta.
Edited by Trevor Hunnicutt)
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