July 2, 2018, will mark the 54th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made segregation in public places and employment discrimination based on race, national origin, sex or religion illegal. Considering that the decades following Reconstruction up until about 1957 saw virtually zero civil rights legislation nationwide, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 remains a crowning moment in American history for Black women and men. It started a movement that expanded its reach and influence to other marginalized parts of the country, acting as a blueprint for later efforts like the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and National Organization for Women in 1966.
The groundwork of civil rights leaders in the early 1960’s ushered in an era of hard fought battles for representation in schools, the workplace, and even our economy. The potential growth for Black communities at this point seemed promising, with the prospect of access to better schools, greater work opportunities, and better living conditions just on the horizon. However, there remains a staunch trend when it comes to expanding access for those in the margins: racial tensions increase, violent outbreaks follow, and legislation doubles back on its earlier promises of reprieve. 54 years later, that trend remains steadfast—and crippling.
Unequal Access in Public Facilities
Nearly ten years after the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, much of the country was unsurprisingly unwilling to take up desegregation, as evidenced by cases like U.S. v. Wyandotte County—where a Kansas county jail’s policy kept inmates separated by race due to unfounded fears of violence—and Wright v. City of Emporia—where another city in Kansas sought to operate its school independently from its surrounding county, resulting in further segregation. Petitioners fought to have the city incorporate a dual system that dismantled segregation in its school, as mostly Black students were inevitably forced to attend schools outside of Emporia. According to court documents, the court’s ruling “permitted the U.S. Justice Department to sue to secure desegregation of certain public facilities owned, operated, or managed by any state or subdivision of a state.”
Now, several decades after the passage of that Civil Rights Act and after efforts to establish equal access to such facilities, cases of almost identical attempts to promote self-segregation remain. These kinds of racially motivated actions hide behind political rhetoric and often lead to damaging results. In housing, those living in poorer parts of Durham, for example, are sent out the door en masse, as gentrification actively displaces low-income residents. In education, the achievement gap continues to adversely affect students in marginalized communities, as poor schools still fight for better resources. Unequal access to public facilities must be viewed through a lens of racial disparity, otherwise such injustices will continue. Nearly six years ago, members of a predominantly white suburb in Alabama attempted to secede from its county in an attempt to “seek better access to funding and more control over the schools’ curricula.”
The move would have had a most immediate impact on the Black and Brown student bodies in the county, but the city of Gardendale denied the move ever being racially motivated. After years of ongoing legal battles, in February of this year, an 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Judge Madeline Haikala to deny Gardendale’s request, despite Haikala initially allowing Gardendale to continue with their plans knowing the racial motives behind them. Where instances like this existed in the past as explicit, racially motivated acts, today’s are far more thinly veiled, and more frequently protected by members of court and office.
Drug War, Police Brutality, and Further Incarceration
Despite fights for equality, equity, and representation, Black communities remained pigeonholed as lawless and depraved years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. John Ehrlichman, one of Nixon’s top aides, admitted years later that, “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.” That heavy criminalization of Black drug offenders would carry long lasting effects well into the 21 century, as evidenced by the overrepresentation of Black and Latino prisoners in our criminal justice system.
The crack epidemic of the 80’s saw Congress pass the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which for the first time cemented mandatory minimum sentences for those convicted of possessing certain amounts of cocaine. As highlighted by Dahleen Glanton’s report for The Atlantic, the sentences, however, were much tougher for crack cocaine than powder cocaine cases—which disproportionately affected African-Americans. In 2006, the ACLU provided an extensive report of the 20 years of unjust criminal sentencing from federal crack cocaine laws in the 70’s and 80’s that disproportionately, and predatorily, targeted Black communities. Their research revealed that, in 1986, before the enactment of federal mandatory minimum sentencing for crack cocaine offenses, the average federal drug sentence for African Americans was 11 percent higher than for whites. Four years later, the average federal drug sentence for African Americans was 49 percent higher.
What follows is the era of the “super predators”: heavier police presence in inner-cities and poorer communities are amplified, and the image of young African-American men as lawless are further reinforced by race riots caught on camera and televised nationally. Due to years of inadequate legislation and nonexistent social discourse, racial tensions reach their peak in the 90’s and spill over into the era of police brutality that is today. The deaths of Oscar Grant in 2009 and Trayvon Martin in 2012 at the hands of law enforcement sparked immediate public outcry, and were followed by a slew of killings that called attention to the racial disparity in many of these high profile cases, where officers were frequently acquitted or not charged altogether.
Room to Grow
54 years, and in this age we have witnessed a resurgence of civil rights efforts, as well as conversation about the state of things in African-American communities across the nation fluctuating. Despite all this, America continues to grow more diverse than ever before. Representation in education, business, and the arts expands wide enough to include those in the margins, and social discourse does grow more profound each day. Now is the time to act more thoughtfully on what we have learned from the past. Today’s conversations should turn into action, and that action must work to combat the staggering number of crimes against marginalized groups. Now more than ever is the time to build room for forgotten communities to grow.
Jamal Michel is a Duke graduate and an English teacher at Northern High School. His column runs on alternate Wednesdays.
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Jamal Michel is a Duke graduate and an English teacher at Northern High School. His column runs on alternate Fridays.