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📚 Summer School · The Reading Room

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1964 · Landmark Laws

The Civil Rights Act

You can’t be kept out because of who you are.

President Lyndon Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act, with Martin Luther King Jr. looking on.
The real thing · President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act, July 2, 1964. Public domain (U.S. government).
Remember this

Same doors, same chances — for everybody.

✏️Two water fountains with an old “separate” sign being taken down by a smiling worker.
Illustration

Not so long ago, people were kept apart by the color of their skin — different schools, different seats, different doors. It hurt, and it was unfair.

✏️Martin Luther King Jr. speaking to a huge, hopeful crowd of every kind of person.
Illustration

Brave people marched and spoke up for years, asking the country to keep its promise that all people are equal.

✏️A restaurant, a school, and a workplace, each with a wide-open door and a mix of happy people going in.
Illustration

So Congress passed a big law: you cannot be kept out of a job, a school, a restaurant, or a bus because of your race, your religion, or where your family is from.

✏️A pair of hands of different colors shaking, with a checkmark seal.
Illustration

It didn’t fix everything overnight. But it made a rule the whole country has to follow: treat people fairly.