Torture and the "Controversial" Arc of Injustice

Several decades ago, "controversial" subjects in news media included many issues that are now well beyond controversy. During the first half of the 1960s, fierce arguments raged in print and on the airwaves about questions like: Does a black person (a "Negro," in the language of the day) have the right to sit at a lunch counter, or stay at a hotel, the same way that a white person does? Should the federal government insist on upholding such rights all over the country?

Some agonizing disputes, in the media and on the ground, came to a climax with passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Suddenly, after many decades of struggles against Jim Crow, federal law explicitly barred racial discrimination in public accommodations and employment. After President Lyndon Johnson signed the measure, saying "Let us close the springs of racial poison," controversy faded about access to restaurants and hotels.

But the need for civil rights protests continued, and for a time they increasingly focused on the right to vote. Banning poll taxes, literacy tests and other timeworn devices of discrimination that were routine in the South, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 followed. White supremacists howled about states' rights, but the law took hold.