By Kimberly Jones Merchant, MCJ President and CEO
On this day, 62 years ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. It outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It ended segregation in schools, workplaces, and public spaces. It was, in the truest sense, a promise — a promise that this country could be more than the sum of its worst instincts.
That promise did not come easy. It came from years of marches and boycotts. It came from lunch counter sit-ins and Freedom Rides. It came from people who were beaten, jailed, and killed for believing that America could live up to its ideals of freedom and justice for all. Here in Mississippi, we know that history in our bones — Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, and thousands of others whose names never made it into textbooks but whose sacrifice is written into every ballot cast, every classroom integrated, every door that opened because they refused to let it stay closed. The Civil Rights Act wasn’t handed down. It was won by people who wanted a future where discrimination, voter suppression, and segregation were relics of the past.
We have seen real progress since that bill was signed. This country elected its first Black president. More Black, Brown, and Indigenous leaders sit in rooms of power today than at any point in our history. Doors that were once sealed shut have opened.
But 62 years later, we have to ask an honest question: are we moving forward, or are we sliding backward?
New voter restrictions are spreading across the country and right here at home in Mississippi. Diversity and equity initiatives are being dismantled, often by the very institutions that once championed them. Nonprofits fighting for racial justice are being targeted, defunded, and delegitimized. And we are seeing open, unapologetic displays of racism and discrimination that many of us thought — and hoped — belonged to a different era.
This isn’t happening by accident. It is a concerted, coordinated effort to roll back 62 years of progress and in some places, to take us back even further than that.
This is exactly why the Mississippi Center for Justice was created.
To push forward when others are trying to push us back. We exist to finish the work that the generation before us started, and that the generation before them fought and bled for. Their vision was simple and it was radical: an America — a Mississippi — where Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and every marginalized community can thrive. Where people are not discriminated against, demoralized, or ostracized from the society they help build every single day.
That means we will keep fighting to keep the voting booth open to every eligible Mississippian. We will keep fighting for an education system that is just and that sets every child up for success. We will keep fighting for health justice and economic justice, because rights on paper mean little without the ability to actually live a full and dignified life. We will keep fighting so that every family in this state has the chance to leave the next generation better off than the last.
Sixty-two years ago, the hard work and sacrifice of organizers was partially fulfilled when the Civil Rights Act became law. They built something that was supposed to outlast them.
Now it’s our turn to make that a reality. The fight for voting rights, for equity, for justice in Mississippi is not finished — and the forces working to undo it are not slowing down. We won’t either. Join us in this fight.
Learn more about how the Mississippi Center for Justice is moving the fight forward here.
To become partners in this work, click here.