Remarks on the 40th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act
Speech by Wade Henderson - June 24, 2004
Good Afternoon. I'm Wade Henderson, Executive Director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the nation's oldest, largest, and most diverse civil and human rights coalition.
A few weeks ago, the nation commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Brown vs. Board of Education. In that momentous decision the Supreme Court recognized that the starting point for achieving the Constitutional promise of equal opportunity for all was with the fulfillment of an equal opportunity to learn. While this nation has come a long way since Brown, we're still divided by race and class, especially where we live and where our children go to school.
To realize the promise of Brown 50 years later, LCCR launched a 12-point agenda to ensure a quality education for every child in America. That agenda focuses on three vital and inter-related goals -- improving education, attacking concentrated poverty and ensuring diversity.
Yesterday, the one year anniversary of the Grutter decision, reminded us that, as the Supreme Court made clear, affirmative action is one concrete tool that we can use today to achieve Brown's goals of equality in education.
Next week we will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the most comprehensive and far reaching civil rights legislation adopted since post-Civil War Reconstruction.
In its wake Congress passed and presidents have signed additional laws to protect the rights and dignity of all Americans. Unfortunately, in the last several years, federal court decisions have undercut and weakened America's civil rights laws. Thus, it is sadly ironic that this 40th Anniversary year also marks the introduction of a new civil rights bill -- The Fairness Act: The Civil Rights Act of 2004.
Premised on the same basic principle that underscores the history of our nation's civil rights struggle -- equal opportunity for all -- its purpose primarily is to restore the 1964 Act and its progeny to Congress' original intent. In short, the FAIRNESS Act is designed to restore fundamental civil rights for our citizens, especially minorities, women, workers, persons with disabilities, and seniors.
I'm sure we will discuss these contemporary cases of injustice and unfairness in greater detail, but let me conclude by simply asking that as we celebrate the 1964 Act, we recall the real giants – Democrats and Republicans alike -- on whose shoulders we all stand –
Let us remember Hubert H. Humphrey, Phil Hart and Emanuel Celler, but let us also remember that there were leaders like Jacob Javitz, Everett Dirksen, William McCulloch, Charles "Mac" Mathias, and John Lindsay. These giants worked across party lines because they knew that treating some of us as second-class, when it comes to rights guaranteed by the Constitution was neither moral nor just, and hardly a beacon for the rest of the world.
If we are to be that "shining city on a hill," let us start by recommitting ourselves to forging bipartisan solutions to the nation's continuing civil rights problems – including enacting the Civil Rights Act of 2004 -- and carrying on with the important work that remains to become a "more perfect union" with equal justice for all.
