Biden to visit LBJ Library in Texas on Monday for 60th anniversary of 1964 Civil Rights Act

July 23 (UPI) -- President Joe Biden will travel to Texas next week to visit the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the White House announced Tuesday.

Biden will be at the LBJ Presidential Library near downtown Austin, the state capital of Texas, on Monday to recognize the 60th year since the landmark civil rights legislation was signed by Johnson on June 2, 1964, months after the 1963 assassination of former President John F. Kennedy in Dallas.

The outgoing president will be the keynote speaker and is expected to receive the Liberty and Justice Award from the LBJ Presidential Library and LBJ Foundation.

The public program was originally scheduled for July 15 but was postponed following the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on July 13 at a campaign event in Butler, Penn.

"We are honored President Biden remains committed to joining us at the LBJ Library to mark the 60th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act and we look forward to hosting him," Mark K. Updegrove, president & CEO of the LBJ Foundation and a noted presidential historian, said earlier this month in a news release .

The event will take place in the library's large auditorium with room for approximately 1,000 visitors.

A special exhibit in honor of the CRA's 60th anniversary at the library will show off photos from the civil rights era and will temporarily display three original pieces of legislation signed by Johnson himself: the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 1965 Voting Rights Act and the 1968 Fair Housing Act.

Lyndon Johnson was the last U.S. president -- until Biden -- to not seek a second term in the White House. Johnson made that decision in 1968 as the Vietnam War ultimately had consumed the latter part of his presidency.

Biden on July 1 issued an official presidential proclamation in honor of 1964's Civil Rights Act ahead of the event's original July 15 date.

The critical civil rights legislation was the "answer to President John F. Kennedy's call for national action to guarantee the equal treatment of every American regardless of race," the proclamation read, which lead to other historically significant pieces of legislation, such as the 1965 Voting Rights Act that also was signed by Johnson.

In the Jim Crow era, from the 1870s through the mid-20th century, Southern cities enforced segregation in schools, transportation, recreational facilities and parks to prevent racial mixing. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, at first Kennedy's goal before his death, outlawed such practices but had lingering effects.

Notably, Biden appointed the first Black woman to the Supreme Court in addition to having picked Kamala Harris , also a woman of color, as his vice president and the first woman in American history to hold the job.

"Despite this critical step forward, securing our civil rights remains the unfinished fight of our time," the proclamation read. "Our country is still facing attacks to some of our most fundamental civil liberties and rights, including the right to vote and have that vote counted and the right to live free from the threat of violence, hate, and discrimination."

About 10 years ago during the CRA's 50th anniversary, there was talk of how the effort to achieve full civil rights in society still had more work to be done as it related to the legalities of gay marriage, which became the law of the land the following year in 2015 after a Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that gay marriage was, in fact, legal.

"The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was, of course, an enormous milestone, a transformative turning point for America. It opened the door to inclusion and opportunity and activism in ways that continue to reverberate today," said Evan Wolfson, founder and president of Washington, D.C.-based Freedom to Marry, said at the time.

"It rededicated all of America to building a stronger, better, more inclusive society," Wolfson said of the Civil Rights Act.

UPI has an extensive history of civil rights news coverage, a former reporter from that time going so far as to claim UPI's coverage was more complete than other wire services -- and more comprehensive than in Southern newspapers or radio stations, whose management was often opposed to the civil rights movement and sought to squelch or downplay coverage.

The White House highlighted Biden's sweeping efforts to aid marginalized communities, noting a uses of executive clemency, a $16 billion investment Black colleges and universities, job creation and banking reforms and the administration's recent effort to change the federal government's "failed approach" to marijuana reform, which the White House says "disproportionately impacts communities of color."

It took a 1954 Supreme Court decision, 10 years before Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, to rule that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional when at the time some 9,000,000 white and 2,650,000 Black students attend separate schools in 17 states and the District of Columbia.

Biden's proclamation talks of reversing segregation's "shameful legacy" in the United States and creating newer opportunities.

"On this anniversary, may we recommit to continuing the work that the Civil Rights Act began six decades ago -- it is still the task of our time to build a democracy where every American is treated with dignity and has an equal opportunity to follow their dreams," it continued. "We must continue to move forward together, stand with one another, and choose democracy over autocracy and beloved community over chaos. We must choose to be believers, dreamers, and doers."

However, that rapid desegregation trend in the 1960s and 1970s was reversed in the past two decades when both racial and economic segregation increased, the White House previously claimed.

"For example, segregation between white and Black students is up 64% since 1988, while segregation by economic status has grown by 50% since 1991."