The vanguard of civil rights protection in Iowa turns 40 this month. Human rights advocates, however, say the Iowa Civil Rights Commission’s work is just beginning.

For proof of that, ICRC Executive Director Ralph Rosenberg looks beyond Iowa’s borders to Philadelphia, Miss., where justice for three slain civil rights workers finally arrived on June 21, the 41st anniversary of their deaths when former Ku Klux Klansman Edgar Ray Killen, 80, was sentenced to 60 years in prison on three manslaughter charges.

Iowa may not have the same bloodstained, racist past as Mississippi, but the Killen verdict tells Rosenberg that “the problems of the past haven’t been rectified.”

“We still have discrimination,” he said. “Sometimes it’s more hidden, sometimes it’s not so hidden and sometimes it’s very overt.”

The agency Rosenberg heads was created by the 1965 General Assembly to enforce the provisions of the Iowa Civil Rights Act, legislation that initially prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, religion or national origin, but has been amended over the years to also prohibit bias based on sex, age and disabilities.

Though many of the issues associated with the civil rights movement 40 years ago have been addressed, Iowa’s civil rights law remains a vital protection for a culturally diverse workforce that will be part of Iowa’s new economy, Rosenberg said. One in two residents coming into the state are people of color, and half of all new Iowans are women, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Despite the potential for more cultural clashes as Iowa becomes more diverse, “a lot of people think we have achieved the dream,” said Alicia Claypool, the commission’s chairwoman. She believes the milestones achieved over the past 40 years have contributed to a misplaced complacency about the cause of civil rights that resulted in both cuts to the ICRC’s budget and, as Iowa was in depths of its fiscal crisis in the early part of the decade, some talk about eliminating the ICRC altogether and folding its responsibilities into Iowa Workforce Development

The 2005 General Assembly appropriation of $950,788 restored some of the cuts that had been made to the agency’s budget beginning in fiscal year 2001 and subsequent years, but that amount is still far short of the $1.2 million FY 2000 appropriation. The cuts forced the agency to reduce its staff by one-third, Rosenberg said, “we are still fighting to be funded at the level we were at some five years ago.”

WORKPLACE BIAS MOST COMMON ALLEGATION

Some 2,350 complaints were filed with the ICRC in fiscal year 2003, a typical year, Rosenberg said. About 85 percent of the cases centered on employment issues, 10 percent related to public accommodations and 4 percent alleged discrimination in housing. A small number of complaints alleged discrimination in education and ability to obtain credit.

Also in that fiscal year, the last for which Rosenberg was able to assemble data, nearly half – 46.8 percent – of the ICRC’s 2,295 cases resulted in complaints being dismissed without further investigation. Rights-to-sue letters were issued in 12.1 percent of cases, 11.2 percent were settled in mediation or withdrawn after a benefits settlement conference, and 9.5 percent were found after the initial investigation to lack probable cause.

In those non-housing cases, sex and disability discrimination were most often cited, with 723 and 715 complaints filed, respectively. There were 560 filings alleging racial discrimination, 508 alleging retaliation, 429 alleging age discrimination and 148 alleging discrimination based on national origin.

Claypool believes the agency’s caseload represents only the “tip of the iceberg” and said it’s impossible to estimate how many people were intimidated or fearful of coming forward. Talk that the goals of civil rights legislation have been met is premature, she said.

“White people often have the perspective the problems are much better, but ask a person of color, and the problems are there, maybe just hidden,” she said “We know we are a better state because of [the Civil Rights Act], but in the same breath, there are still moral and justice issues to address.”

REFORMERS OF THE 1960s WERE REALISTS

In the years before 1965, getting the Iowa Legislature to adopt civil rights laws was unpopular. Des Moines attorney Robert Wright Sr., a longtime NAACP leader who litigated many important civil rights cases, recalls that at the time, many Iowa politicians didn’t see the need for the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, much less an Iowa statute. His and other civil rights activists’ arduous lobbying efforts came not too long after Wright been told, “Darky, stay where you belong,” when he decided to move his law office to a downtown building. Still fresh in his memory was the idea that “public accommodations” in Des Moines meant that African-Americans were relegated to balcony seats in the Orpheum and Paramount theaters, even when black entertainers like Nat King Cole and the Ink Spots performed, or allowed to attend a midnight show at Riverview Park to hear Count Basie, after the white crowds had gone home.

“Des Moines had some real serious problems in denial of entertainment and denial of employment,” said Wright, whose civil rights efforts often extended into the courtroom, where his fights for equality included opening building trade unions to African-Americans and desegregating the Des Moines Fire Department.

Eventually, though, Iowa legislators became more receptive to a state civil rights law. The federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not eliminate the need for new state legislation because, among other factors, it did not apply to most Iowa employers or to businesses accommodating the public for a fee, University of Iowa law professor Arthur Bonfield, the principal architect of the Iowa Civil Rights Act, said in a 1990 speech celebrating the 25th anniversary of the law. The federal statute also did not address discrimination in housing.

Bonfield and other reformers wanted to address sex discrimination, as the federal law did, but were realistic enough to know that could thwart the bill’s chances for passage. For the same reason, a section prohibiting discrimination in the sale or rental of housing was also deleted from the original bill. The law has been amended four times to become more inclusive – in 1967 to add a fair housing clause, in 1970 to prohibit gender discrimination, in 1972 to prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities and in 1974 to ban unfair credit practices – and its enforcement provisions were strengthened in 1978.

Most reformers at the time also wanted legislation declaring a war on poverty, the so-called third dimension of the civil rights movement that Hal Chase, a history instructor at Des Moines Area Community College’s Urban campus, talks about in his black history class. Most people closely identify the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. with battles for desegregation, voting rights and racial harmony, “but they forget what King was doing when he was assassinated,” Chase said. “It was the Poor People’s Campaign, and the essence of that was the Economic Bill of Rights.

“The law has changed and the [picket] signs are down, but the hearts and the mind are a different matter. I believe the articles and statistics show the gap has widened in the last 20 to 25 years between those at the top – corporate America – and those not at the top.”

In that respect, he said, “the dream is most unfulfilled.”

Wright agrees. “The dream certainly is not what Dr. King thought it should be,” said Wright, now 80. “It would not be entirely true to say that all the things he was thinking of, and things African-Americans had been denied, have all of a sudden, or even over a period of time, been accomplished.”

The ICRC’s work for the future is clearly defined, said Linda Carter-Lewis, president of the NAACP’s Des Moines branch. “There are new battlegrounds and new issues there to be fought, as well as some long-standing ones,” she said. “The face of discrimination is broadening and including many more arenas.”

Achieving the dream …

What: 40th anniversary celebration of the Iowa Civil Rights Act

When: 8 a.m.-noon Thursday, June 21

Where: Capitol complex

Unity march to a reception at the State Historical Building begins at 8 a.m. on the west steps of the Capitol. Iowa civil rights leaders and activists will reflect on the past accomplishments and yet-to-be-resolved issues for the future. Keynote address, “Bridging the Years: A Summary of Where We’ve Been and Where We Need to Go to ‘Achieve the Dream,’” by the Rev. C.T. Vivian, a Baptist minister and civil rights movement legend. Entertainment highlights will include a dramatic interpretation of civil rights pioneer Edna Griffin’s 1948 sit-in at the Katz Drugstore in downtown Des Moines and a performance of civil rights songs by the Cornerstone Family Church Choir.

Panelists confirmed: Dr. James Bowman, Mary Campos, Roxanne Barton Conlin, District Judge Artis Reis, Jill Avery, John Paul Chaisson, Sharon Malheiro, Charlotte Nelson, the Rev. Keith Ratliff, Connie Terrell, Walter Reed, Ralph Rosenberg.

Additional information: www.state.ia.us/government/crc