This is a clip from President Johnson’s speech before signing the bill into law. This was only a week after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis.
We all know that the roots of injustice run deep. But violence cannot redress a solitary wrong, or remedy a single unfairness.
Of course, all America is outraged at the assassination of an outstanding Negro leader who was at that meeting that afternoon in the White House in 1966. And America is also outraged at the looting and the burning that defiles our democracy.
We just must put our shoulders together and put a stop to both. The time is here. Action must be now.
