Mother Jones
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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.
Let us now praise famous laws and the year that begat them: 1964.
The first thing to know about 1964 was that, although it occurred in the 1960s, it wasn’t part of “the Sixties.” The bellbottoms, flower power, LSD, and craziness came later, beginning about 1967 and extending into the early 1970s. Trust me: I was there, and I don’t remember much; so by the dictum variously attributed to Grace Slick, Dennis Hopper, and others (that if you can remember the Sixties, you weren’t part of them), I must really have been there.
1964 was a revolutionary year. It was a time when Congress actually addressed the people’s business, and it gave us at least three great laws.
One was the monumental Civil Rights Act, which aspired to complete the tragic and sanguinary work of the Civil War and achieve the promise of the Thirteenth Amendment.
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