A Time for Tribute; A Time for Action.

This article celebrates two crucial anniversaries: the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, and the fortieth anniversary of the adoption of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The two events bookend nearly a decade of unprecedented activity in the modern civil rights era. In many ways, the Brown decision led to the creation and passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The social and legal changes that took place from Reconstruction to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act contextualize both the achievements and the still-unfulfilled promises of the Act. In 1866 the nation's first Civil Rights Act declared all persons entitled to equal protection of state, territorial, and federal laws. Criminal enforcement was the only way to implement these rights. In 1871 civil enforcement remedies were added to the legislation, making it possible to bring suit against a person who violated one's civil rights. But the success of these measures, if any, was stifled in the South, where so-called Black Codes quickly hardened into Jim Crow restrictions, remaining largely unchanged for years until Brown. In 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed long-standing precedent and declared separate but equal public schools unconstitutional. However, in the very next year, the Court held that the implementation of equality could proceed only with deliberate speed.