How Has the Fair Housing Act Fared?
On April 11, 1968, one week after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law one of the era's last major pieces of civil rights legislation. The landmark provision of the Civil Rights Bill of 1968 — the Fair Housing Act — prohibits discrimination in the sale and rental of housing.
During the bill-signing ceremony, President Johnson called the new law one of the "promises of a century. ... It proclaims that fair housing for all — all human beings who live in this country — is now a part of the American way of life."
As part of an occasional series, "Echoes of 1968," Cheryl Corley traveled to the west side of Chicago and reports on the evolution of the Fair Housing Act over the past four decades — and the obstacles that remain in fulfilling its promise.
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