WaPo | On Monday, there was a remarkable moment at the Department of
Justice: two women of color who had personally experienced the pain of
prejudice walked to the podium to announce the Justice Department’s
discrimination lawsuit against the state of North Carolina.
The
two top Justice Department officials – one the daughter of Indian
immigrants and the other the granddaughter of a “dirt poor” sharecropper
and minister in the deep South – linked the growing controversy over
transgender access to restrooms in North Carolina to the civil rights
battles of the 1960s.
“It was not so very long ago that states,
including North Carolina, had signs above restrooms, water fountains and
on public accommodations,” said Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, a
native of North Carolina, in perhaps the most impassioned speech she has
given since taking the reins of the Justice Department last year. “We
have moved beyond those dark days, but not without pain and suffering
and an ongoing fight to keep moving forward. Let us write a different
story this time.”
