US President Barack Obama was two years old when former US president Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and put an end to schools, restaurants and water fountains separated by race.
Half a century later, the first black man to become president is commemorating the accomplishment and recommitting the nation to fighting the deep inequalities that remain.
Obama was due to take the podium yesterday on the third and final day of a 50th anniversary summit that brought together four living presidents, civil rights leaders and cultural icons to the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas. The celebration comes as Johnson’s legacy, four decades removed from the end of the Vietnam War, is being revisited, with his prolific domestic achievements serving as a reminder of how little Washington seems to accomplish today.
Photo: Reuters
For Obama, who was criticized by some African-Americans in his first term for doing too little to help minorities, the commemoration dovetails with a focus on inequality and economic opportunity that has become an early hallmark of Obama’s second term, even though the advances Obama has secured are modest. Democrats have seized on the broader theme as their battle cry for the election year.
Lingering injustices in the US notwithstanding, the significance of Obama’s participation in yesterday’s ceremony was not lost on Democratic Representative John Lewis, who withstood violence and arrest during the civil rights marches through Alabama in the mid-1960s.
“If somebody told me back in 1964 that a man of color would be president of the United States, I would have said: ‘You’re crazy, you’re out of your mind, you don’t even know what you’re talking about...’ When people say to me nothing has changed, that feels like, come and walk in my shoes,” Lewis said.
The summit began on Tuesday with remarks from former US president Jimmy Carter, who lamented residual racial inequality and apathy about the problem. Former US president Bill Clinton followed on Wednesday, riffing on immigration and voting rights, while warning that a modern-day reluctance to work together threatened to “put us back in the dustbin of old history.”
Obama and first lady Michelle Obama were due to appear at the summit yesterday afternoon. Former US president George W. Bush was to deliver the finale in the evening.
“It’s probably the most important moment in the history of the library since LBJ died in 1973,” Mark Updegrove, the presidential library’s director, said of the 50th anniversary.
As activists and leaders look to the next 50 years, the focus has turned to other areas where they say injustice remains and can be reduced, including equal pay for women, same-sex marriage and poverty — an issue that echoes Johnson’s own War on Poverty.
Voting rights have also attracted renewed attention in the wake of a US Supreme Court ruling gutting much of the Voting Rights Act — another part of Johnson’s legacy.
The convergence of such historical heavyweights — all the living presidents except former US president George H.W. Bush, who is 89, are attending — underlines a renaissance of sorts for Johnson, whose legacy for decades was stained by the expansion of the Vietnam War under his command.
With time has come a renewed look at what he managed to accomplish on the domestic front, a long list of sweeping reforms that includes Medicare, Medicaid, fair housing and immigration legislation, to name a few.
The aggressive pace of Johnson’s legislative victories has offered a contrast to Obama in the years since Republicans seized control of the House of Representatives, two years into Obama’s presidency.
Republicans accuse Obama of lacking the enthusiasm to engage with US Congress that marked Johnson’s tenure. White House aides and Democrats point to Obama’s ambitious healthcare law and argue that institutional changes unrelated to Obama have made governing near impossible.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was