The Civil Rights Division at 60: The Fight for Justice Continues
White supremacists are marching openly through American cities. Our courts’ dockets are filled with cases involving blatant discrimination in areas such as voting rights, housing and incarceration. Is this 1957 or 2017? Recently, former leaders of the Civil Rights Division from Republican and Democratic administrations joined at the National Press Club to reflect on this very question.
Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights Under Law board member and former co-chair Stephen J. Pollack, who led the Civil Rights Division during the Johnson administration, said that eliminating barriers to voting for African Americans “changed the political face of the nation,” but that this progress increasingly is in jeopardy.
“The great civil rights acts of the 1950s and 60s remain on the statute books. The nation needs a Civil Rights Division and an Attorney General committed to perform the federal government’s responsibility to enforce them,” Pollak said at the National Press Club convening.
Sixty years ago on September 9th, President Eisenhower signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1957, establishing the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice. Today the Division’s mission is to enforce federal statutes prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, sex, disability, gender identify, sexual orientation, religion and national origin. But the Trump administration is seeking to pervert the Division’s true mission. At the same time the president is also seeking to install in the Civil Rights Division an individual, Eric Dreiband, who has a thin record on core civil rights issues. This nomination arises at a critical time in our history. The spike in hate crimes, voter suppression and police violence across our country make clear the vital mission of the Civil Rights Division. We are deeply concerned.
Like the Civil Rights Division, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law has been at the forefront of efforts to secure equal justice under the law for all Americans since its founding in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy. Our founders were attorneys deeply involved in advancing racial justice, like the late John Doar.
Doar, who helped form the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and served as its co-chair, stood in solidarity with heroes like Dr. King and James Meredith, created policy to end segregation, and enforced civil rights laws as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the Civil Rights Division.
We continue to hold this administration and the Civil Rights Division accountable. As the nation continues to confront important issues in civil rights enforcement, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law is leading the way as a nonpartisan racial justice organization.
Joining Pollack at the Press Club Meeting were Stan Pottinger who led the Civil Rights Division from 1973 to 1977 during both the Nixon administrations, in addition to John Dunne who served as the Assistant Attorney General from 1990 to 1993 during the George H.W. Bush administration as well as Vanita Gupta who was appointed to lead the Civil Rights Division by President Obama in 2014 to 2017 and is the president and chief executive officer of our sister organization The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
