The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

• Table of Contents
• Executive Summary
• Introduction
• I. Creating the Commission
• II. The Commission’s Early Years
• III. The 60s: Laying the Foundation for Legislation
• IV. The 70s: School Desegregation and an Expanded Mandate
• V. The 80s: Dismantling the Commission
• VI. The 90s: The Commission Devolves
• VII. The Post-Millennial Commission
• Conclusion
• Recommendations
• Acknowledgements

Introduction

Fifty years ago, President Eisenhower signed into law the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. Far from being elated, civil rights leaders and their supporters in Congress were ambivalent at best. The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights reluctantly supported the legislation, having seen the bill’s strongest provisions stripped out in order to avoid a fatal Senate filibuster. Liberal senators were despondent, one of them characterizing the bill as "like a soup made from the shadow of a crow which had starved to death."¹ Even President Eisenhower - who had originally sent the bill to Congress urging its swift passage - considered vetoing it after weakening amendments were adopted in the Senate.²

History has shown, however, that the Civil Rights Act of 1957, though modest in scope, played a significant role in the evolution of civil rights issues over the next 50 years. The mere fact that legislation labeled "civil rights" not only came to a vote, but passed the Senate - controlled as it was by powerful southern committee chairs - was a significant accomplishment. But more than that, the bill set the stage for future, stronger laws and for effective enforcement of those laws. It did so in several ways: it strengthened voting rights protections for African-American citizens; it established a Civil Rights Division in the U.S. Department of Justice that had the resources and the mandate to enforce the laws that Congress was to enact over the next several decades; and it created a Civil Rights Commission to investigate allegations that Blacks were being denied the right to vote and to monitor the government’s enforcement of its own civil rights laws and policies.

In its early years, the United States Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) had three primary goals: to gather facts that would lay the foundation for civil rights legislation; to stimulate action by Congress and the executive branch; and to serve as the "conscience of the nation" by shining a spotlight on discrimination and segregation across the country. Over the years, as the commission was reauthorized by Congress, its statutory responsibilities expanded. The commission played an active role in shaping the country’s civil rights agenda.

In the following report, we detail the historical context in which the commission was created. We describe its early challenges and its early work, particularly in the area of voting rights, and we discuss the role that the Civil Rights Commission has played in shaping the nation’s civil rights agenda over the past 50 years. We outline its significant achievements, assess its challenges, and examine the roles that structural and political changes and the evolving complexities of civil rights issues have played in the work of the commission. Finally, we make recommendations for the future to begin a dialogue on the need for strengthening the commission’s role as the "conscience of the nation."

Next Section: Creating the Commission

1. Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate (Alfred A. Knopf, 2002) at 1007, quoting Senator Paul Douglas, D. Ill.

2. David A. Nichols, A Matter of Justice, Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution (Simon and Schuster, 2007), at 161-163.