Statement Of
Sen. Patrick Leahy,
Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee,
Hearing On “The 50th Anniversary Of The Civil Rights Act Of
1957
And Its Continuing Importance”
September 5, 2007
This Sunday our Nation will mark the golden anniversary of the Civil
Rights Act of 1957. It was the first major civil rights law passed
since Reconstruction, and it remains one of the most important pieces of
legislation this Committee and the Congress ever considered. Its story
has been retold in the award-winning books Master of the Senate
by Robert Caro and Parting the Waters by Taylor Branch.
With this hearing, we examine whether Federal civil rights
enforcement has remained faithful to our goal of achieving equal justice
for all. We meet with the Nation at a crossroads. Two years after the
devastation from Hurricane Katrina, its aftermath and the failure of
government to protect our citizens in the Gulf Coast and to help those
displaced from the lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans and elsewhere, many
Americans doubt our commitment to civil rights.
We have a Justice Department without effective leadership. The
Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, Associate Attorney General,
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and many others have
resigned in the wake of the scandals. And we have witnessed what
appears to be the abandonment of the founding priorities of the Civil
Rights Division. That Division, which has so often served as the
guardian of the rights of minorities, has been subjected to partisan
hiring practices and partisan litigation practices.
The flood of recent departures from the Justice Department, culminating
in last month’s resignation of the Attorney General and the Assistant
Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, underscore the Civil
Rights Division’s loss of direction and the shaken morale of dedicated
career staff. We cannot allow the absence of meaningful enforcement to
render our civil rights laws obsolete.
America has traveled a great distance on the path toward fulfilling
the promise of equal justice under law, but we still have miles to go.
Just last year, this Committee received extensive testimony during the
reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act of continuing racial
discrimination affecting voting. During last fall’s election, we
received reports about several efforts to intimidate Latino voters.
These civil rights abuses ranged from false campaign mailings in Orange
County, California to intimidation at the polls in Tucson, Arizona. An
important legislative initiative is on our Committee agenda this week to
try to stem deceptive voting practices and abuses still being practiced
against minority voters. As long as the stain of discrimination remains
on the fabric of our democracy, the march toward equal justice must
continue.
The Civil Rights Act of 1957 created an Assistant Attorney General
dedicated solely to civil rights enforcement which led to the formation
of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. It also provided the
Justice Department with a new set of tools to prosecute racial
inequality in voting. Although the Department had prosecuted some
criminal cases since 1939, this law allowed the Department to bring
civil actions on behalf of African-American voters. With this new
authority, the Division worked to correct civil rights violations and
helped set the stage for Congress to pass stronger legislation with
respect to voting, housing, employment and other key areas in the decade
of the 1960s.
Americans must remain steadfast in our commitment that every person –
regardless of race, color, religion, or national origin – should enjoy
the American dream free from discrimination. We should continue to
expand that dream to fight discrimination based on gender or sexual
orientation, as well. We should reaffirm our commitment to the promise
of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. I hope that today’s hearing is a step
in doing so.
I welcome our distinguished panel of civil rights leaders and thank
them for being with us today.
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