Type: Exhibition section

Name: Social Justice

Detail: "I have said before that the words, "American Citizen," will become only a worthless term, if any one of us is denied the rights which belong to all citizens. We cannot stand aside and watch while one man's rights are denied, for what he loses today, we all may lose tomorrow." Harrison A. Williams, Jr., Remarks on joining as a cosponsor of the Civil Rights Act of 1967.

The opening of American society to include more of its citizens as full participants in its democracy and to respect all individuals’ unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is perhaps the signature legacy of the 1960s and 1970s. On the legislative front, the battle for civil rights for African-Americans culminated with landmark acts in 1964 and 1965. Other forms of legal discrimination—including, but surely not limited to, those of age, sex, and disability—were exposed, confronted, and became the subject of legislative action by Williams and others.

Type: Exhibition caption

Detail: Support for lowering the voting age nationally from twenty-one to eighteen had existed to some extent for many years. But its urgency increased with the student activism of the 1960s, especially in the face of the glaring injustice of eighteen-year olds having no vote despite being subject to the military draft and possible death on the battlefields of Vietnam. Attempts to lower the voting age through federal legislation in 1970 were overturned in part by the Supreme Court, leading to a patchwork of age-eligibility laws. Accordingly, a constitutional amendment was proposed, and the states promptly ratified it within seven months.

Type: Finding aid

Name: Inventory to the Papers of Harrison A. Williams, Jr.

Detail: Finding aid provides description of materials in the Harrison A. Williams collection