In August 1963, I rode my bike from my family’s home in the District’s historically African American neighborhood LeDroit Park to join the great civil rights march on the Mall.
I had the tremendous fortune of growing up in the capital of the world’s greatest democracy, but I attended segregated schools. I remember dirty looks in department stores. My home town didn’t enjoy the basic right to govern itself. So, at age 15, I attended that freedom march — the march of A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, John Lewis and Martin Luther King Jr. — even without my parents’ permission.
Growing up in the 1960s, I followed the marchers, sit-ins and Freedom Riders, understanding that these brave individuals were struggling for my rights. Attending Howard University and Rutgers Law School, I aimed for a career as a civil rights lawyer. I worked as associate director of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union and was Washington bureau director of the NAACP.
Almost 20 years ago, I became president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. I have headed the nation’s leading civil and human rights coalition, encompassing more than 200-member organizations, as we made our case to three administrations, Congress, the media and Americans from every background.
Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama and senators Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) joined the efforts for voting rights, disability rights, hate crime laws and other landmark legislation.
Now, I’m stepping down by the end of 2016, after the Leadership Conference completes its search for a new president and transitions to new leadership. I’d like to think that I’m retiring at the top of my game, as did Jim Brown and Sandy Koufax (a kid can dream).
But I also know the time has come for generational change.
For more than a half-century, my generation has witnessed and worked for extraordinary transformations. This year, we celebrated the 50th anniversaries of the Voting Rights Act, the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Decades of landmark legislation opened doors for the people from every community of color in countless positions in government, business and academia. The American middle class is nowhere near as male, monochromatic or monocultural as in the “Mad Men” era.
Adapting the African American model of movement-building to their own needs and traditions, other oppressed groups — women; Latinos; Asian Americans; Native Americans; lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans; older Americans; and Americans with disabilities — have organized, fought for and won safeguards for their civil rights. The civil rights coalition proudly expanded its efforts to embrace these constituencies and concerns.
Still, by many metrics, people of color, low-income people and other marginalized groups are falling further behind or are doing worse.
Unemployment among communities of color remains at recession levels. The gaps in wages and wealth are increasing exponentially. Our schools are more segregated by color and class. We face continuing attacks on voting rights. Unarmed African American men and women are being killed by police from Baltimore to St. Louis, Staten Island to North Charleston, S.C. More than 11 million undocumented immigrants live and labor in the shadows of our democracy. And our incarceration rates are exiling millions of men and women from mainstream America.
Now is the time to move forward, with a new generation taking the lead. For many years, my generation wondered: “Where is the new civil rights movement?” Now, we see it in the streets and on social media, from Black Lives Matter to the campaign for a living wage and immigration reform activists advocating for aspiring Americans.
When I went to work for the Leadership Conference, Washington was divided, and many despaired of getting government’s basic business done, much less addressing the nation’s unfinished agenda. Today, government gridlock seems to be the new normal, but bipartisan support exists for addressing critical issues from education to mass incarceration.
There are times when progress can be measured by milestones, times when we struggle to move forward inch by inch and times when we consider it a victory to hold the ground we have gained.
After 35 years in the civil and human rights movement, I know the journey toward justice is like a relay race, with each generation moving closer to the finish line.
Filled with that faith, it’s time for me to pass the baton.
The writer is president and chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Read more about this issue:
Danielle Allen and Cathy Cohen: The new civil rights movement doesn’t need a MLK
The Post’s View: Martin Luther King and the struggle for civil rights, then and now
Ruth Marcus: Another struggle in the Carolinas over voting
E.J. Dionne Jr.: On the Civil Rights Act’s 50th anniversary, follow LBJ
