7 / 27
fully protested and marched, entered the courtrooms and the
seats of government, demanding a justice that has long been
denied. The voice of the Negro was the call to action. But
it is a tribute to America that, once aroused, the courts and
the Congress, the President and most of the people, have been
the allies of progress.
LEGAL PROTECTION FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
Thus we have seen the high court of the country declare
that discrimination based on race was repugnant to the Con–
stitution, and therefore void. We have seen in 1957, 1960,
and again in 1964, the first civil rights legislation in this
Nation in almost an entire century.
As majority leader of the United States Senate, I helped to
guide two of these bills through the Senate. As your Presi–
dent, I was proud to sign the third. And now very soon we
will have the fourth-a new law guaranteeing every Amer–
ican the right to vote.
No act of my entire administration will give me greater
satisfaction than the day when my signature makes this bill
too the law of this land.
The voting rights bill will be the latest, and among the
most important, in a long series of victories. But this vic–
tory-as Winston Churchill said of another triumph for free–
dom-"is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the
end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
That beginning is freedom. And the barriers to that free–
dom are tumbling down. Freedom is the right to share fully
and equally in American society-to vote, to hold a job, to
enter a public place, to go to school. It is the right to be
treated in every part of our national life as a person equal
in dignity and promise to all others.
[ 3
J