The White House Conference on Civil Rights was held June 1 and 2, 1966. The aim of the conference was built on the momentum of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in addressing discrimination against African-Americans. The four areas of discussion were housing, economic security, education, and the administration of justice.
President Lyndon Johnson had promised this conference in his commencement address at Howard University the year before. Like that address, the conference was named "To Fulfill These Rights." The title was a play on "To Secure These Rights," a report issued by Truman's civil rights commission in 1947. There were over 2,400 participants, representing all the major civil rights groups except SNCC, which boycotted the conference. Out of the conference came a hundred-page report that called for "legislation to ban racial discrimination in housing and the administration of criminal justice, and...suggested increased federal spending to improve the quality of housing and education."
Famous quotes containing the words civil rights, white, house, conference, civil and/or rights:
“Civil Rights: What black folks are given in the U.S. on the installment plan, as in civil-rights bills. Not to be confused with human rights, which are the dignity, stature, humanity, respect, and freedom belonging to all people by right of their birth.”
—Dick Gregory (b. 1932)
“It is not the intelligent woman v. the ignorant woman; nor the white woman v. the black, the brown, and the red,—it is not even the cause of woman v. man. Nay, ‘tis woman’s strongest vindication for speaking that the world needs to hear her voice.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)
“When I first got here, every time you’d say “breast feeding” on the House floor there would be a snicker.... this has been happening since creation. Can we finally get a grip on it?”
—Susan Molinari (b. 1958)
“Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
“... as a result of generations of betrayal, it’s nearly impossible for Southern Negroes to trust a Southern white. No matter what he does or what he suffers, a white liberal is never established beyond suspicion in the hearts of the minority.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 2, ch. 10 (1962)
“A hundred things are done today in the divine name of Youth, that if they showed their true colours would be seen by rights to belong rather to old age.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)