After years of street battles and lunch
counter sit-ins, the end of segregated public
accommodations was largely accepted with nary a
whimper. Explains Carson: "Once change came, it
came relatively rapidly in many parts of the
country." On other fronts, the pace of change
was slower. The enfranchising of blacks required the
stronger language of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
And the desegregation of housing was not addressed
until three years later in the Fair Housing Act of
1968.
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Carson calls the legislation an
"important watershed" and a "psychic
win for African-Americans" because it
"dealt a death blow to Jim Crow." But, he
says, blacks today are still struggling for full
freedoms, justice, and equality. Angelo Ancheta,
legal director of the Harvard University Civil
Rights Project, says that despite the act,
inequality still haunts the workplace and the
classroom. "And housing is the area where the
least progress has been made."
Yet, he
adds, it is important to see how the Civil Rights
Act came to influence American culture. Industry now
sees inclusion as a good business practice, and the
Supreme Court in June re-endorsed affirmative-action
policies. "Racism and inequality are now seen
as serious problems," Ancheta says. "We
would not have made the progress we've made
without the act. It made a world of
difference." It certainly changed the face of America.
All The Words?
Most citizens know that
"The Star-Spangled Banner" was written by
Francis Scott Key, a young Washington lawyer who in
1814 witnessed the British attack on Fort McHenry.
And many can say, if not sing, the first verse. But
few are likely to know the three other verses, which
are somewhat less elegant. For example: "And
where is that band who so vauntingly swore, / That
the havoc of war and the battle's confusion / A
home and a country should leave us no more? / Their
blood has washed out their foul footstep's
pollution. / No refuge could save the hireling and
slave / From the terror of flight or the gloom of
the grave, / And the star-spangled banner in triumph
doth wave / O'er the land of the free and the
home of the brave." -Katy Kelly
