
          The Civil Rights Act After Twenty Years:  Part One: Where We've
Been and Where We Are
          By Ashmore, Harry S.Harry S. Ashmore
          Vol. 7, No. 1, 1985, pp. 8-10
          
          One of the things that disturbs me when people look back at the
history we've lived through--some of us have lived through a good deal
more of it than you younger ones--is that we tend to forget its
contemporary context. A great deal has happened since 1964 and the
passage of the Civil Rights Act. But a great deal had to happen before
Congress could be persuaded even to put civil rights on its
agenda. There was the long, lonely effort of NMCP lawyers in the
federal courts that finally ended the white primary and gave blacks
the ballot. And, of course, ten years before the Civil Rights Act
there was the Brown decision by the United States Supreme Court
ordering desegregation in the public schools. But Brown did a great
deal more than that.
          
            Precedents and Pressure
          
          The Brown decision dealt not only with the
specific matter of public education but also, for the first time since
Reconstruction, threw the full weight of the federal government behind
enforcement of the civil rights of black individuals. It did that by
reversing the old states' rights doctrine that had let the states of
the South pursue whatever kind of restrictive policies they cared to
impose upon their black citizens.
          Those of you who are old enough to remember what the South was like
thirty years ago when Brown came down will recall that it was
virtually as segregated a society as the one that exists in South
Africa today. There was no public intermingling of the races. There
was no permissible social contact between the races. Blacks and whites
were separated in the schools. Blacks, denied the ballot, effectively
had no voice in public affairs, and had little opportunity to move
toward their own economic advancement.

          The practical results of Brown followed when black Southerners
began to understand the implications of that decision. White
Southerners did not choose to carry out the desegregation mandates of
the courts--that would take years--but blacks began to realize that they
now would have the support of the federal government if they chose to
take their case into the streets and defy recalcitrant whites situated
in the courthouses and the state houses of the Southern states.
          And so began what came to be called the Civil Rights Movement--the
mass protest in which for the first time in our history blacks were
moving under their own leadership and in their own right to demand
simple justice. They began to get results. They had mounted political
pressure that had to be recognized.
          First, then, came precedents set by the federal courts with their
relative independence from the popular vote. Then came pressure
brought by blacks and their white supporters--the protest marches that
provided the high drama we all remember. It took all that to move a
reluctant Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act.
          
            From Civil Liberties to Civil Rights
          
          Also, I think we need to remember that it required further action
by the courts to implement the Civil Rights Act and the measures that
followed. Simply declaring that blacks had a right to attend any
school that was maintained with public funds didn't result in any real
change. What came to be called affirmative action was adopted when the
Supreme Court recognized that decrees ordering the Southern school
districts to integrate their separate schools into single systems were
being accepted only in theory. As long as the courts held that the
test would only be whether the schools were moving in good faith
toward compliance, there was no real movement except in the border
states and a few of the upcountry Southern districts with small black
populations.
          Real compliance began when the judges--I think reluctantly--had to
assume the assignment powers of local school districts and establish a
qualitative test of racial balance to affirm good faith. Once they did
that the barriers began to crumble.
          Following the courts' lead, Congress was persuaded to move in other
fields where something more than a court decision was required to
insure that black citizens were entitled to rights previously reserved
for whites in housing, education and employment. This marked the
transition from the traditional concept of civil liberties to civil
rights. The main instrument for enforcement was the withholding of
federal benefits.
          
            Mr. Reagan's Arrant Nonsense
          
          Now affirmative action these days--in some strange and remarkable
way--has become a negative term. I suppose we have to recognize that
one of the results of the last election was to affirm the position of
the Reagan Administration, which at the outset proclaimed that
affirmative action is not only unnecessary--since economic growth
will take care of all discrimination problems--but is actually a
violation of the professed purposes of this sovereign nation.
          Mr. Reagan and his neo-conservatives supporters go so far as to
contend that the results of the programs which were put into place
following the declaration of a War on Poverty during the
Kennedy-Johnson years not only were wrong in principle as well as
being practical failures, but actually proved to be a handicap that
delayed black progress.
          I find this astonishing.
          In Los Angeles a few weeks ago I took part in a session held on the
thirtieth anniversary of the Brown decision. One of the people on the
panel with me was Linda Chavez, staff director of the US Commission on
Civil Rights. I listened in disbelief to her argument that all the
positive changes that have taken place over the last thirty years took
lace despite federal programs, not because of them, that blacks and
other minorities would have been better off had none of these programs
existed. Now for anybody who has lived through these years, whether in
the South or outside it, this has to be considered arrant nonsense.
          Certainly, many federal programs fell short of what we hoped for
them. We had reason to be critical of some, then and now. But T find
the argument that the federal government has no affirmative role in
the slow and agonizing process of bringing minorities into the
mainstream is about 

as shocking as anything I've heard in covering
politics for fifty years--yet that is the position of the Reagan
Administration.
          
            Where We Are
          
          When the Reaganites talk about a new federalism what they really
mean is the old federalism. They would repeal the Brown decision and
go back to Plessy--contending that the states
should have the final word on all these matters, and that it's no
concern of the federal government if black citizens are deprived of
their declared constitutional rights.
          I don't think that this Administration is going to get away with
the repeal of Brown, but we are certainly going
to see--as we've already seen in the last four years--the emphasis
continue to shift away from the pursuit of affirmative action on
behalf of civil rights for minorities.
          When we look around today we can agree that certainly there has
been a great deal of progress. People in this room know that as well
as anybody. The black middle class--which is about a third of the
black population--has more or less been accepted by the white middle
class on more or less equal terms. The working poor-another third of
the black population-benefited for a considerable time from the
affirmative efforts of government. Now, they're suffering heavy
penalties through the cutbacks in federal programs under the Reagan
Administration.
          Then there's the last third--what's now called the underclass--the
people below the poverty line. This group includes about a third of
all blacks and about ten percent of the whites. Their situation is
about what it was before there was a Civil Rights Act. In many cases
it is probably worse. The programs that were intended to help them to
move out of poverty are the ones that have been abandoned or are being
condemned today by the Reaganites--the people who say that this is a
problem that is beyond the reach and scope of the federal government
and, if it really exists, should be left to state and local
government.
          I think anybody who knows our history knows what the results of
that would be.
          So this is where we are. I don't think the Reagan
Aministration is going to completely undo the progress
we've made in these twenty years; but certainly effective movement
toward guaranteeing equality of opportunity for all Americans has been
halted.
          
            During the fortieth anniversary meeting of the Southern
Regional Council, held in Atlanta this past November, Pulitzer Prize
winning journalist Harry Ashmore, Julius L. Chambers-director of the
NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and former SRG executive director Harold
Fleming reflected upon the status of civil rights twenty years after
the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. An additional comment was
offered by Paul Gaston, professor of history at the University of
Virginia and current president of the Southern Regional Council. In
the following pages, we present the perspectives of these long-time
observers of, and participants in, Southern changes.
            Harry S. Ashmore's most recent book is Hearts and Minds: A History
of Racism from Roosevelt to Reagan (McGraw-Hill), winner of the
Southern Regional Council's Lillian Smith Award in 1982.
          
        