The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 represented precisely such a hope - that America had learned from its past and acted to secure a better tomorrow.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at gunpoint if necessary.
What creates freedom? A revolution in the streets? Mass protest? Civil war? A change of government? The ousting of the old guard and its replacement by the new? History, more often than not, shows that hopes raised by such events are often dashed, sooner rather than later.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 laid the foundation for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but it also addressed nearly every other aspect of daily life in a would-be free democratic society.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was vigorously and vociferously opposed by the Southern states. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed it into law nonetheless.
When I was teaching in the 1960s in Boston, there was a great deal of hope in the air. Martin Luther King Jr. was alive, Malcolm X was alive; great, great leaders were emerging from the southern freedom movement.
When community action was put into federal law in the early sixties as part of the effort to combat poverty and social injustice, I supported it intellectually.
Martin Luther King Jr. is remembered as our prince of peace, of civil rights. We owe him something major that will keep his memory alive.
It was to carry the American democratic journey beyond these failings that Black citizens and civil rights workers risked unemployment, violence and death.
I've come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society.
At the same time it offered the hope, as it still does, that improved understanding could better the lot of mankind. For me, growing up in the 1930s, the two motivations powerfully reinforced each other.
No opposing quotes found.