This Giving Tuesday, Help Us Build a Nation as Good as its Ideals

Sixty years ago today, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Ala., at a time when segregation on public transportation was still legal. A year later, the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed bus segregation, and within a decade of Parks’ arrest, the United States – at least on its surface – had changed.

By then, President Lyndon B. Johnson had signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA). Today, as advocates and lawmakers push to expand the Civil Rights Act, and as entities like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and U.S. Department of Justice reinterpret the law to include more groups of people, the VRA has been eviscerated. And while some states are working to expand voter access, others continue to make it more difficult for some Americans to vote. From LGBT employment discrimination to voter suppression tactics deployed across the country, there remains, unfortunately, a great deal of unfinished business.

Today is also Giving Tuesday – a day that since 2012 has been dedicated to celebrating service and giving back. And in this enduring fight for civil and human rights, we need you.

The Leadership Conference Education Fund works to build public will for laws and policies that will protect and advance the civil and human rights of everyone in America. We were founded in 1969 as the education and research arm of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, then called the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights – the nation’s premier civil and human rights coalition of more than 200 national groups. Learn more about us here.

As President Obama said two years ago while the nation commemorated 50 years since the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, “America, I know the road will be long, but I know we can get there. Yes, we will stumble, but I know we’ll get back up. That’s how a movement happens. That’s how history bends. That’s how when somebody is faint of heart, somebody else brings them along and says, come on, we’re marching.”

This Giving Tuesday, make a gift to The Leadership Conference Education Fund and join us in the march today.