Access to the courts is among the civil rights guaranteed by the US Constitution. We created LawYou to ease the constriction of that right caused by, among other things, the ever-increasing complexities of our laws and legal systems. Can everyone’s civil rights be impacted by a single protest against injustice, or by one attorney laboring in obscurity?

The linked article tells an important story: how one small act of civil disobedience helped inform the national civil rights movement, which ultimately changed America’s legal landscape. Here’s an excerpt (click the link below to read the full NPR article):

On June 18, 1964, black and white protesters jumped into the whites-only pool at the Monson Motor Lodge in St. Augustine, Fla. In an attempt to force them out, the owner of the hotel poured acid into the pool.

“When they drug us out in bathing suits and they carried us out to the jail, they wouldn’t feed me because they said I didn’t have on any clothes. I said, ‘Well, that’s the way you locked me up!’

“But all of the news media were there, because somehow I guess they’d gotten word that something was going to happen at that pool that day. And I think that’s when President [Lyndon B.] Johnson got the message.”

The following day, the Civil Rights Act was approved, after an 83-day filibuster in the U.S. Senate.

“I’m not so sure the Civil Rights Act would have been passed had [there] not been a St. Augustine. It was a milestone. We was young, and we thought we’d done something — and we had.”

This story reminds us that no step taken toward liberty is too small, no act is too insignificant, no voice too quiet, no blog post too short to make a difference in someone else’s life and to make this country an even better place in which to live.

Continuing to identify and remove barriers (including those affecting access to the courts) keeps the country true to our founding principles: that we all have been endowed by our Creator with the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Here’s the full article: Remembering A Civil Rights Swim-In: ‘It Was A Milestone’