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SALT LAKE CITY — A lot has changed in the U.S. since the Civil Rights Act went into effect five decades ago, but leaders in Utah say there is still a long way to go.
On July 2, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the landmark legislation to outlaw discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
“It's purpose is not to divide, but to end divisions,” Johnson said. “Divisions that have lasted all too long.”
Before the Civil Rights Act, America was a society with separate access to public facilities: restrooms, drinking fountains, restaurants and more. Jeanetta Williams, president of the NAACP's Salt Lake City chapter, remembers what that was like growing up in Oklahoma.
“Of course it made you feel inferior to the white kids, you know. You would play with them, but then when we would go eat we couldn't eat in the same facilities,” Williams said.
She considers the progress America has made since 1964 as a "mixed bag" — stronger enforcement measures now exist but, she says, so do more subtle forms of discrimination.
The discrimination today may not necessarily be along racial lines, color lines for pigmentation, but I think it comes with economic color; that is, the color of money.
–Joanne Milner, Utah chapter chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
Joanne Milner, the chair of the Utah chapter of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, agrees with Williams.
“The discrimination today may not necessarily be along racial lines, color lines for pigmentation," Milner said, "but I think it comes with economic color; that is, the color of money."
Milner and Williams both consider the same-sex marriage issue as an extension of the civil rights fight; and one poll by the Center for American Progress finds most people already think that protection already exists.
Voting rights, the women say, is another issue where changes in society create new rules.
There are many people who feel the Supreme Court's overturning of the Voting Rights Act is a setback. But there is not question that more people, overall, feel the Civil Rights Act as a whole has served this country well, and made it a better place to live.
