The Civil Rights Act at 60
Freedom and Justice for All is an Unfinished Task
July 2nd is the 60th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a landmark bill that seemed to realize Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 's Dream that his four kids would “one day live in a nation where they will not be judged… but by the content of their character.” Its passage was the culmination of the Civil Rights movement but it remains incomplete because veterans, like his best friend Ralph Abernathy, still do not receive the rights they fought for. That is why we need a civil rights organization like the one Martin and Ralph started in Montgomery, but that does not ignore military communities.
Excerpt from a flyer for the ten year anniversary of the organization behind the Montgomery Bus Boycotts.
Our nation has not fully reckoned with the humiliation visited upon a generation of military families and the great cost of that indignity. Ralph was a platoon sergeant in WWII, but neither he nor Martin could have known that soldiers and veterans would one day be targets of bias, harassment, and discrimination. The New York Times was the first to report on anti-military attacks in 1967. Spitting on someone was not criminalized until 2007, making it easier to dismiss such claims as little more than meritless complaints. That has remained the rule rather than the exception for 50+ years.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) both exclude veterans from their jurisdiction. The United States Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) not only excludes veterans, it silences them as well. Although section 4712 of the Hate Crimes Protection Act created protections for military families, the USCCR did not mention veterans or their family members in its ten year anniversary report, “In the Name of Hate.” When I tried to bring this to their attention during a 2019 public conference call, the USCCR terminated the call early, pulling back the curtain on how little dignity and respect with which federal agencies treat veterans.
As I told the Oregon Department of Veterans Affairs Advisory Committee at its most recent quarterly townhall, human dignity is the missing ingredient for military suicide prevention. Military suicide has not decreased meaningfully because its root cause has gone unchallenged; no amount of pills or sessions of therapy can succeed without addressing implicit bias and the danger it poses to military families. Military civil rights will not end the suicide epidemic, but they must supplement interventions already in place. At the least, they can make good on the promise of the American Dream for those caught in the nightmare of civilian bias, in which stereotypes about soldiers paint military personnel as little more than the villain of toxic pacifists, the victor of religious nationalists, or a victim for civilian saviors.
Before Martin and Ralph worked under the auspices of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), they created the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). MIA also stands for Missing in Action, as in, “our civil rights are MIA.” Montgomery is a military town, home to Maxwell Air Force, and military families were instrumental to the movement Martin inherited. I am calling for a new MIA, the Military Improvement Association, a community organization that will promote human dignity for military families.
Excerpt from a flyer for the inaugural meeting of the Military Improvement Assoc.
Anyone interested in picking up where Martin and Ralph left off is invited to meet in-person or online at 4 p.m. Thursday (Fourth of July) at Albany First Christian Church, 432 Ferry St. S.W. The hourlong meeting will be in the Community Room on the alley side of the church just off Ferry Street. For more information and to RSVP for Thursdays inaugural meeting of the Military Improvement Association, visit GIJustice.com/mia.
