Paul Sharits (1943-1993)

1968

Civil Rights Act bans racial discrimination in housing and real estate in the United States of America.

1965

Voting Rights Act attempts to ensure equal voting rights by placing Federal observers at polls.

1964

Most comprehensive Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of color, race, religion, or nationality in

places of public accommodation covered by interstate commerce. Schools are to be desegregated.

Discrimination in employment banned on basis of race, religion, or sex.

1962

President Kennedy signs an executive order prohibiting discrimination in housing connected with Federal

government programs.

1960

Civil Rights Act establishes the commission on Civil Rights, to investigate charges that discrimination exists in

voting.

1955

Supreme Court bans segregation in public recreational facilities.

1954

Supreme Court declares school segregation unconstitutional.

1875

Civil Rights Act of this year the last Federal Legislation for 82 years.

1870

1866

Civil Rights Acts of these years are the first Legislation attempts to grant blacks political and legal status equal to

whites; these acts give blacks the rights to sue (and be sued), to give evidence and to hold real estate and

personal property.

1863

The Emancipation Proclamation issued but is highly limited and qualified; total freedom of black slaves must be

achieved in other ways.

1776

Thomas Jefferson, in his draft of the Declaration of Independence, denounces slavery; however, this visionary

passage is deleted from the final draft of the Declaration by Congress. It is to this omitted statement that this

film is addressed—the film is a color-sound-energy eulogy to Jefferson’s declaration of human liberty.