North Carolina trailblazers reflect on 60th anniversary of Civil Rights Act passage

RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- Tuesday marked 60 years since President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, a landmark decision that changed America forever. The sweeping legislation prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

"When I think about the Civil Rights Act, I think about how rigidly segregated the American South was in so many ways, and all of the institutions in employment, in education, in housing and just across the board," North Carolina State Sen. Dan Blue told ABC11. He also serves as the state Senate Minority Leader. "The Civil Rights Act was aimed at addressing that and making us one society one America, under one constitution and to create opportunities for all Americans."

Blue was a student at a segregated school in Robeson County, North Carolina when the act was passed, a decade after Brown v. Board of Education. Despite the passage of the Civil Rights Act, he graduated from a fully segregated high school.

"It would be another decade almost after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 before we really had a concerted effort to desegregate the public schools. It was in the early 1970s before that began to happen," Blue remembers.

Mike Morgan was also attending a segregated school around the time the act passed. Though, he would become the first black student to integrate into a white elementary school in New Bern.

"I knew so many eyes would be on me to see how I did and what I did and that I would be blazing a trail for others that would come behind me," Morgan said.

That trailblazing spirit would ultimately lead him to become the first elected black Justice on the North Carolina Supreme Court, and he would go on to begin a campaign for Governor last year.

"To be able to determine my walk of life in terms of wanting to go into the law, and having opportunities from that point to go all the way up to the state Supreme Court in our great state of North Carolina, and even be in the political realm and to touch every phase of our society in terms of those opportunities, it's meant a great deal to me," Morgan told ABC11. "It's given me opportunities that otherwise I would not have had before the Civil Rights Act."

Though the Civil Rights Act accomplished so much and was such a big step toward equality in America, both men agree there is still work to be done, citing attacks on affirmative action and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

"We still have to be vigilant and diligent to make sure that the Civil Rights Act still has teeth," Morgan said.

Blue said it's crucial that we're intentional with the leadership elected to ensure that we're protecting the legacy left by the Civil Rights Act.

"You can't legislate how people are going to feel about each other, but you can create the opportunities where they learn to appreciate there are differences in their diversity, their qualities, traits, their talents, their skills now and basically their humanness, and so all of us ought to be striving towards that," Blue said.