Wade Henderson Audio Transcript
I think that Americans understand intuitively that equal treatment
under law is a principle that should be guaranteed to us all. And so
when someone argues that they've been discriminated against and can
make a compelling case, which makes it obvious that it's true, I think
that most Americans believe that when there's a wrong, there should
be a right...a way of correcting that wrong.
And I think when you look at the evolution of American democracy from
1776 until the present, what you will see is that there were many groups
that were excluded from the protections of the Constitution at the time
of its inception, that over time have been included, you know, women,
persons of different ethnic backgrounds, now all can be part of America.
I say that because I am part of the last generation of Americans...I'm
over 50...part of the last generation of Americans that were born at
a time when segregation was still legal, but have grown up with one
foot in a post-segregated world. And while I think that there are still
some lingering vestiges of discrimination, and racism is still a phenomenon
in American life, the changes which have taken place nonetheless have
been nothing short of phenomenal, the changes over the past 40 to 50
years. And in the scheme of world history, that's really the blink of
an eye.
Every modern civil rights bill, since the first was enacted in 1957,
up through the '60s, '70s, '80s, and '90s, has involved either the direct
leadership or the imprimatur of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
And we've moved from an organization, a coalition, of 30 member organizations,
which was the founding number, until today we have over 180 national
groups.
We were actually established in 1950 by real giants of the civil and
human rights movement. A. Philip Randolph, who was the first African
American leader in organized labor, he founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping
Car Porters. Roy Wilkins, who was then the executive secretary of the
NAACP, that was the title of the executive director of the organization,
and of course Mr. Wilkins led the NAACP through perhaps its most tumultuous
years: the 1950s, '60s, and '70s. And finally Arnold Aronson, who was
a leader of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council.
The three of them came together in the late 1940s with an idea that
organizations committed to the advancement of civil and human rights
might be more successful if they worked together.
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