May 17, 2014, marked the sixtieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. On that day, President Obama issued a proclamation commemorating the decision as “a turning point in America’s journey toward a more perfect Union.” The president noted that Brown not only breathed life into the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment but also provided impetus for the landmark civil-rights statutes of the 1960s, most notably, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.