 |
| The Equality Stud, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. |
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - legislation that prohibited discrimination on the basis of race and gender. And on this day 67 years ago, the leading motivator of the act , Dr, Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis Tennessee.
Originally only inclusive of race, Howard W. Smith amended the bill that would eventually become the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include clauses forbidding gender discrimination. Now, whether Smith did this because he was a proponent of women's rights or just wanted to kill the bill before passage (hoping that congress would be too chauvinistic to pass a bill including women's rights) is up for debate. In any case, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 happened. So, thank you Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, thank you John F. Kennedy, thank you Lyndon Johnson, thank you Everette Dirksen, thank you Mike Mansfield, thank you Emmanuel Cellar, thank you Howard W. Smith, thank you the rest of congress, and thank you to all the other people that helped this great piece of legislation pass!
For more information, check out this episode of Fresh Air with an interview of Todd Purnam, author of the book An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties and the Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It's mad fresh.
PS. International Women's Day was great last month. Thanks to all who attended! We're going to keep this blog going with posts like this and preparations for IWD 2015.
