Introduction

Summary

Our civil rights laws, and the vision that animates them – the vision of an integrated and nondiscriminatory society with equal access for blacks, women, and other disadvantaged groups, to quality education, fair housing, the enjoyment of public spaces, and employment opportunities, along with political participation, voting rights, and the equal protection of laws – have long been held by wide swaths of both popular and elite political opinion to constitute, collectively, a moral lodestar, both here and abroad.