Civil Rights Act of 1964 at 50 remains a work in progress

“We couldn’t go to school with white kids. … We could not go to certain parts of town. ... There were times when we’d be walking home at night, and a car’s headlights would flash on and off. That was the Ku Klux Klan. It meant you’ve got to run.”

— Connie Hathorn

Those demeaning, disgusting and dehumanizing experiences recalled by today’s superintendent of Youngstown City Schools about his childhood in seethingly segregated Louisville, Miss., paint a picture of a shameful era in America.

Multiply those injustices to Hathorn millions and millions of times over throughout the U.S., and one can begin to get a sense of the powerful transformation this nation embarked upon 50 years ago this Wednesday with the stroke of a pen by President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

The signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, officially known as Public Law 88-352, ended centuries of government-sanctioned discrimination, segregation and downright cruelty to minority groups in America, most notably African-Americans. The law outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national original and ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, the workplace and all businesses that served the general public, collectively known as public accommodations.

Its impact was immediate and immense. Black Americans, such as Connie Hathorn, would no longer have to bypass a public drinking fountain for a dirty water hose from the back of the county courthouse to quench his thirst. It meant women such as June Ewing, a retired nutrition program worker in Canfield, would no longer have to ride in the back of a public bus in Charlottesville, Va. And it meant that African-American theater-goers in downtown Youngstown’s stately Strand, Warner, Palace and Paramount theaters would no longer have to settle for second-class seating in the cinemas’ dank upper balconies.

On a broader scale, the granddaddy of modern civil-rights public policy ushered in decades of political, social and economic advancements for African-Americans and many other ethnic, religious and sexual minority groups. But those strides did not come without strident and often violent fights. They came only after decades of “No Coloreds Need Apply” signs posted prominently at businesses across America, only after countless attacks by vicious police dogs and gushing water hoses on peaceful protesters and only after untold numbers of lynchings, shootings and bombings by KKK members and their racist ilk.

The act strengthened this nation and made more inclusive the promise of “life, liberty and justice for all,” as outlined in the Declaration of Independence, the signing of which we coincidentally also celebrate this week.

RACISM STILL PERVADES US

As we mark those two milestones in human rights for Americans, we must also recognize that the Declaration in July 1776 and the Civil Rights Act in July 1964 do not serve as endpoints in this nation’s ongoing journey to reach equal rights and opportunities for all. They are but mileposts along the way. To be sure, the two venerated documents have not completely cleansed this nation of all of the injustice, discrimination and segregation that stunts this nation’s greatness.

Consider the continually widening income gap between black and white Americans. Consider jobless rates for African-Americans that routinely run twice as high as those for whites. Closer to home, consider the Mahoning Valley’s ranking as the 17th most racially segregated metro area in the U.S., according to a 2013 study by the Business Insider website in conjunction with Brown and Florida State universities.

Clearly, racial polarization remains alive and well in this nation, and some of the noble goals of the landmark 50-year-old Public Law 88-352 remain unfulfilled. Nonetheless, the monumental progress achieved over the past 50 years illustrates that none of the remaining challenges should be insurmountable as long as Americans of all backgrounds work to embrace the letter and, more importantly, the spirit of the nation-altering Civil Rights Act of 1964.