Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America

by Stacey Abrams

Blacks and others chafed under the loss of freedoms that had been briefly won during Reconstruction. Over time, they began to organize protests and agitate elected officials to restore what the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments promised in the Constitution. In 1948, with Executive Order 9981, Truman integrated the armed forces. Though heralded for its progress, the act simply enshrined that which should have been instinctive: that those who risked their lives for our democracy shouldn’t be discriminated against while doing so. In 1951, the civil rights movement began in earnest. Under the leadership of a newly emboldened Supreme Court and determined jurists like Thurgood Marshall, a litany of cases and new laws began to construct our modern understanding of civil rights. The Civil Rights Act of 1957, weakened by the actions of then Senate majority leader Lyndon B. Johnson, held that the federal government has the right to enforce laws prohibiting the denial of voting rights and establishes the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. Three years later, the Civil Rights Act of 1960 restored key portions of the 1957 proposal, including empowering the federal government to enforce court orders regarding desegregation and other civil rights legislation, along with the ability to file civil rights lawsuits on behalf of the public. Prior to this provision, an aggrieved Black citizen had to personally file, and few had the resources or capacity to seek redr...