<i> Chilling a Quarter Century of Civil-Rights Progress Is No Mere Technicality </i>

Twenty-five years ago I was a freshman member of Congress learning the ropes after an earlier career as a California assemblyman. I was involved in the House debate on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and as the first black representative elected from the West, I was keenly interested in the direction of this debate.

I will never forget the hours of harsh discussion in committee and on the House floor, and the parliamentary maneuvers used by opponents to bottle up the bill.

Senate finagling was even worse, with a 75-day filibuster and the introduction of 119 weakening amendments.

It was the shock of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination that provided the catalyst we needed to force congressional action.

We have just celebrated the 25th anniversary of the signing of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which guarantees the rights of equal access to employment, education, public facilities, housing and public accommodations to all Americans, regardless of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

In light of the commemoration, I find myself reflecting on the monumental struggles we as a country have endured.

When I was born in Shreveport, La., in the first decade of this century, virtually every aspect of my family’s life, from employment, to housing, to use of public places was restricted by segregation. Because of this, my father packed up my mother, my sister, brothers and me and moved the family to Los Angeles. Here we hoped to escape the grip of legally mandated racial discrimination and improve our educational prospects.

While the ruthlessness and ugliness of segregation was most apparent in the South, various degrees of discrimination were in existence throughout the our country, including, unfortunately, California. It took lynchings, riots, two world wars and years of massive civil disobedience and millions of individual acts of courage to bring us to the 1960s. Only when the national political, economic and social agenda merged did we produce the final push needed to enact legislation to abolish the vestiges of legal segregation.

The last 25 years have seen many improvements in the practical implementation of equal opportunity in education, employment, housing and public accommodations and facilities. But fine-tuning continues to be needed. Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, we have clarified the intent and strengthened the enforcement mechanisms of equal- opportunity law. Case law over most of the last 25 years also has strengthened the law.

How ironic it is, then, that within days of the 25-year celebration of this watershed law, the Supreme Court handed down devastating decisions that rock the very foundation of the guarantee of civil rights in this country. Yet President Bush dismissed these decisions as “technical subjects--we’re talking burdens of proof and statutes of limitations.”

While guarantees to equal opportunity to a job, quality education and business development may be interesting breakfast conversation to our Chief Executive, they are a matter of basic economic survival to millions of Americans. Burdens of proof and statutes of limitations are the important legal means minorities, women, senior citizens and others have used in our legal system to make the legislative promise of human equality a practical reality.

We must not accept the status quo when it comes to these very fundamental tenets of our entire democratic system. We must affirmatively move to ensure equal opportunity and review possible legislative remedies.

As President Lyndon B. Johnson said of civil rights in 1964: “. . . this not merely an economic issue--or a social, political or international issue. It is a moral issue.”

Blatant and concealed discrimination unfortunately continue to survive in 1989 America, despite the great strides we have made. We have not yet completed our journey to a color-blind society. As my father acted more than 70 years ago to provide an atmosphere of equal opportunity for his family, so too must we act today to guarantee civil-rights protections for our future generations.