NOT-SO-GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY. Sunday marks the 50th anniversary of the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first civil rights legislation enacted in the United States in nearly a century after Reconstruction. The act resulted in the creation of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice and an Assistant Attorney General post designated to civil rights enforcement. It also established a vote refereeing system to help ensure voting rights for blacks in the South, and gave federal prosecutors the power to pursue court injunctions in cases of voter interference.
But as civil rights leaders testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, progress made in the years since the passage of the act is being systematically undone by the Bush administration. Not only has the administration not made continued progress a priority, but they've also actively undermined the Voting Rights Act, including today's decision out of the federal court in Atlanta to dismiss a lawsuit challenging Georgia's voter identification policy. The greater politicization of the Justice Department has only furthered the breakdown of civil rights enforcement, with less attention being given to traditional civil rights cases.
"During the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, we knew that individuals in the Department of Justice were people who we could call any time of day or night. And we felt during those years that the civil rights division of the Department of Justice was more than a sympathetic referee, it was on the side of justice, on the side of fairness," U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), told the committee. "During the movement, people looked to Washington for justice, for fairness, but today I’m not so sure that the great majority of individuals in the civil rights community can look to the division for that fairness."
--Kate Sheppard
