President Biden to commemorate 60th anniversary of Civil Rights Act at LBJ Presidential Library in Austin
AUSTIN — On Monday, President Joe Biden will deliver remarks commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin.
Mr. Biden's visit to the LBJ Presidential Library comes one week after he announced he won't run for reelection.
It's a part of history now that he shares with LBJ, Lyndon Baines Johnson, the last Democratic President who also decided not to run for a second term.
Mr. Biden was originally scheduled to come to Austin two weeks ago, amid calls by some key Democrats for him to step aside.
But he delayed the trip after the assassination attempt on former President Trump.
Then-president Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law on July 2, 1964.
It banned discrimination in the workplace on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
It also ended "Jim Crow" laws, which legalized racial segregation in parks, restaurants, courthouses, and theaters among other public places.
The Civil Rights Act was first proposed in June 1963, by then-President John F. Kennedy.
Hours later, civil rights activist Medgar Evers was assassinated.
Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led the March on Washington in August of that year, where he delivered his historic and iconic "I Have a Dream" speech.
But because of President Kennedy's assassination in November of that year in Dallas, it was up to the new president, LBJ to push for the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
That law paved the way for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which ended discriminatory voting laws.
After his speech in Austin, President Biden will travel to Houston, where he will pay his respects to longtime Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee.
She passed away on July 19 after battling pancreatic cancer.
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