OPINION:
Earlier this week, we marked the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act. It’s worth noting, however, that the signing didn’t make the legislation’s opponents fade away.
On July 3, 1964, Atlanta’s Lester Maddox and several of his customers grabbed pickax handles to chase three Black divinity students from his restaurant. Maddox was arrested and acquitted. He later closed his restaurant rather than integrating it, and successfully ran for governor in 1966.
On July 9 of the same year, Judge James Hare of the 4th Judicial Circuit of Alabama issued an injunction making it illegal in Selma to talk about civil rights or voter registration to more than three people at a time — even during church services. Similar attempts at voter suppression led to the celebrated Selma to Montgomery marches and the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
On July 11, 1964, Klansmen fired into a car carrying three Black Army reservists returning from duty at Georgia’s Fort Benning, killing Lt. Col. Lemuel Penn, an assistant superintendent of Washington public schools. A Georgia court acquitted the murderers, but a federal court used the Civil Rights Act to convict two of them, who later served six years of their 10-year sentences.
PAUL L. NEWMAN
Merion Station, Pennsylvania
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