An Issue of Public Importance: The Justice Department's Enforcement of the Fair Housing ActAbstractOn the afternoon of April 28, 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson met in the Cabinet Room of the White House with a group of citizens who were concerned about civil rights. Included among those citizens was the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. In their presence, the President signed a message to Congress that called for the enactment of "the first effective Federal law against discrimination in the sale and rental of housing" in the United States. The President's message noted that "as long as the color of a man's skin determines his choice of housing, no investment in the physical rebuilding of our cities will free the men and women living there." Not surprisingly, Congress did not pass such a law in 1966 or in 1967. Indeed, President Johnson later observed, "Few in the Nation -- and the record will show that very few in that room that afternoon -- believed that fair housing would -- in our time -- become the unchallenged law of the land."An Issue of Public Importance: The Justice Department's Enforcement of the Fair Housing Act (*.pdf)
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