Fifty years ago this month, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law, making discrimination illegal. The National Urban League was one of the key organizations on hand when the president signed the bill into law. NY1’s Cheryl Wills visits its national headquarters in Manhattan with a look back.
When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law in July 1964, it effectively killed Jim Crow laws once and for all. The National Urban League's Whitney Young was on hand to witness history. He received one of the nearly 100 pens that Johnson used to sign the historic legislation. Today, the National Urban League is marking this 50th anniversary with great pride.
"We are a better nation than we were in 1964,” said Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League.
The landmark Civil Rights legislation banned discrimination, which was still widespread in the mid-1960s, especially in southern states.
"Separate water fountains, people unable to stay at hotels, unable to eat at restaurants, that reality of an apartheid system in America is something that many people can’t even get their head around,” said Morial.
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Source: NY1
