CARTER’S KEYNOTE
Former President Jimmy Carter, the keynote speaker for the Civil Right Summit, targeted the mistreatment of women for the next front in the civil rights movement, calling for a multifaceted attack against abuses from pay discrimination in the workplace to rape on college campuses and global sex-trafficking of women and girls.
Carter, 89, who has embraced a multitude of causes, both domestically and overseas, since leaving the White House more than three decades ago, said that America was “still falling short” on race relations despite a half-century of civil rights advances.
Speaking on Tuesday, the opening day of the summit in Austin, Carter cited continuing disadvantages among blacks in education, the workforce and other areas, pointing out that unemployment among young African-Americans can often range from 25 percent to 50 percent in parts of the country.
“Too many are at ease with the existing disparity,” he said.
He also addressed what has been described as America’s latest civil rights battle by expressing support for same-sex marriage. “I don’t believe there is a difference between people because of their sexual orientation,” he said, drawing applause.
Carter was the first of four former presidents to address the three-day summit meeting marking the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Carter also condemned “sexual slavery” and suggested that U.S. lawmakers could rein in prostitution by copying a Swedish law that prosecutes brothel owners, pimps and customers. “You only have to arrest a couple of men in Atlanta, Georgia,” he said, “and the situation would be transformed overnight.”
NEW YORK TIMES
The 1960s fight for civil rights came with great highs, but for those on the front lines it also came with moments of deep despair.
For activist Julian Bond from Georgia, the former NAACP chairman, that moment came when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. Bond wasn’t a close friend of the famed civil rights leader, he said. But King’s death hit him hard.
“I felt like everything we had worked for was over, it’s all through,” Bond said.
Bond was among several social activists on Wednesday to share their experiences from the 1960s movement at the Civil Rights Summit at the LBJ Presidential Library. He was joined by the longtime congressman from Atlanta, John Lewis, D-Ga., who is considered one of the “Big Six” civil rights leaders, and Andrew Young, a former Atlanta mayor and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Bond told a packed auditorium that he first got involved in civil rights activism while he was a student at Morehouse College. Inspired by the Greensboro, N.C., sit-ins at a Woolworth that refused to serve black students at its segregated lunch counter, Bond and a group of other students decided to try the same thing at a city employee cafeteria, he said.
When the students refused to leave, the cashier called the police. The students were arrested.
But going to jail was actually a liberating experience for many protesters, Lewis said. They felt like they were finally doing something, but they also knew they were in danger.
“We were prepared to die,” Lewis said. “Some of us signed notes and wills.”
Moving forward in such scary situations requires people to go into “executive session” with themselves, Lewis said.
“You say to yourself, ‘I am not afraid, I am not afraid,’” he said.
Facing down violence with peaceful behavior was critical, Young said. That’s something he learned as a youth. His father always told him “don’t get mad, get smart,” Young said. He was also taught that racism is a sickness and those who suffer from it need help.
But growing up in a tough Louisiana neighborhood, he said, you had to learn how to run, fight or negotiate.
“I learned to do all three when appropriate,” he said.
Though the panel was comprised only of men, the group praised the role of women in the civil rights movement, saying they are often forgotten despite their roles in organizing events, emphasizing nonviolence and working with students. The panel also encouraged today’s youth to more aggressively take on problems such as immigration reform, education and poverty.
“Students and young people should be out there agitating, speaking up and speaking out,” Lewis said.
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