Fact #93074
When:
Short story:
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, a landmark piece of legislation in the United States outlawing major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation, is passed into law in the USA. Bruce Hornsby's 1986 song The Way It Is ruminates on the fact that although, "They passed a law in '64, to give those who ain't got a little more", racism and discrimination have continued ever since.
Full article:
Steve Cropper (guitarist, Booker T And The MGs) : We grew up, from when we were little kids, just accepting the fact that that drinking fountain over there was theirs and this one was ours. There was nobody protecting it, nobody actually saying, ‘Hey, you can’t come over here.’ It was just a way of life: You order your food at this window and I order my food at that window. We should have been made aware that something was wrong with that, but we weren’t aware of it until we were adults.
With Booker T. and the M.G.’s, we’d play some club somewhere in any of the major Southern cities, and…musically, everything was always great, but then after the show, we’d go downtown to check into a hotel and invariably they’d say, ‘Oh no.’ They had the rooms until we were there signing the register, and then it was, ‘No, no, you boys can’t stay here.’ So we’d say, ‘Okay, here we go with another one,’ and we’d have to drive out to the motels at the edge of town that just wanted the money. There was never any problem at those motels, and usually it was kind of better in a way, because we’d get up the next morning and be closer either to Memphis or wherever we were going for the next gig. So it didn’t seem to be a problem, and I don’t remember the guys ever complaining about that. It just didn’t happen that way.
(Source : http://www.guitaraficionado.com/march-song-steve-cropper-reflects-on-selma-and-the-mid-sixties-civil-rights-movement.html)
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With Booker T. and the M.G.’s, we’d play some club somewhere in any of the major Southern cities, and…musically, everything was always great, but then after the show, we’d go downtown to check into a hotel and invariably they’d say, ‘Oh no.’ They had the rooms until we were there signing the register, and then it was, ‘No, no, you boys can’t stay here.’ So we’d say, ‘Okay, here we go with another one,’ and we’d have to drive out to the motels at the edge of town that just wanted the money. There was never any problem at those motels, and usually it was kind of better in a way, because we’d get up the next morning and be closer either to Memphis or wherever we were going for the next gig. So it didn’t seem to be a problem, and I don’t remember the guys ever complaining about that. It just didn’t happen that way.
(Source : http://www.guitaraficionado.com/march-song-steve-cropper-reflects-on-selma-and-the-mid-sixties-civil-rights-movement.html)