Pub. 3 2018 Issue 2

16 www.ctaahq.org The Fair Housing Act By Susan Morgan, The newsLINK Group T he Fair Housing Act was sponsored by two senators, Edward Brooke and Walter Mondale, and it was signed into law on April 11, 1968 by President Lyndon Johnson. Its purpose was – and still is — to end housing discrimination and residential segregation in the U.S. The National Fair Housing Alliance was founded in 1988, 20 years later. Its headquarters are in Washington, D.C. and its work is to support the Fair Housing Act. To put the Fair Housing Act into context, first consider the time when it was signed and the people who were involved: • The U.S. was at war in Vietnam, and the Cold War (the relationship between the U.S. and the USSR after World War II ended) was still something that made everyone nervous. • One week earlier, before President Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act, civil rights advocate Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated at 6:01 p.m. at the Lorraine Motel on the second-floor balcony of his room. He was 39 years old and was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. (Rob- ert F. Kennedy, another civil rights advocate, would die at the age of 42 on June 5, 1968 while at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, shortly after giving a speech.) • At the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, two black athletes protested against racial discrimination as they were being awarded a gold and bronze metal by bowing their heads and raising a black-gloved fist when the Star Spangled Banner was being played. They also wore black socks, no shoes, and badges for the Olympic Project for Human Rights. The athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, were expelled from the team but returned home to a hero’s welcome in the African-American community. • Apollo 8, a manned spacecraft that orbited the moon on December 24th, resulted in the first pictures of earth to be taken from space, and pictures of the lunar surface were broadcast on live television. • President Johnson (1908–1973) had become president after John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963. As president, he worked hard in office to champion progressive reforms because he had seen the effects of poverty and discrimination first-hand as a young man