President Barack Obama will deliver the keynote address at a three-day civil rights summit in Texas this week that will unite all of the living U.S. presidents in a rare gathering. The summit coincides with this year’s 50th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the landmark Civil Rights Act.
Dr. Harry Edwards, a sociology professor emeritus of the University of California, Berkeley, and longtime civil rights activist, isn’t surprised the event is attracting a Who’s Who of luminaries in politics, sports and the professoriate.
“Diversity continues to be an important factor in the course and direction of American society,” he says. “This is an opportunity to re-set ourselves and resurrect LBJ’s legacy.”
The summit, which begins Tuesday at the LBJ Presidential Library on the University of Texas at Austin campus, will examine the civil rights movement of the 1960s as well as issues of equality still facing the U.S. and the world today.
Three former presidents will deliver remarks at the event: Jimmy Carter will speak Tuesday; Bill Clinton on Wednesday; and George W. Bush on Thursday. The latter’s father, former President George H.W. Bush, is an honorary co-chair of the event. Obama will give the keynote on Thursday.
Mark Updegrove, director of the LBJ library, says the summit will celebrate the pivotal laws of the 1960s. The 1964 Civil Rights Act, along with the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act in 1968, helped establish the legal foundation for equality for all Americans.
