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Article: THE CIVIL RIGHTS COMMISSION: THE FIRST 40 YEARS.
- Article from:
- Civil Rights Journal
- Article date:
- September 22, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In 1957 President Eisenhower signed the first national civil rights law in 82 years. Coming just three years after the Supreme Court ruled school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, and two years after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. won international attention leading the bus boycott against the all white city government in Montgomery, AL, the new law created a mechanism for guaranteeing African American voting rights in the South. It also created the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, a two-year advisory commission on civil rights issues. Veteran political observers knew that blue-ribbon advisory commissions came and went in Washington, usually ...