 An undisputed high point of the LBJ presidency was the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, one of the most transformative of the major bills that President Johnson signed. It was fitting then that a memorable moment in the history of the LBJ library came on the 50th anniversary of that accomplishment when we hosted the Civil Rights Summit. The summit was an incredible three-day event of speeches, panel discussions, and performances to celebrate the 1964 bill, to take stock of civil rights progress over the last five decades, and to discuss race relations in the years to come. The lineup of speakers was truly remarkable. Giants of the Civil Rights Movement like John Lewis, Julian Bond, Andrew Young, and Mavis Staples graced us with their presence. John Lewis' comments captured the tone of the whole event. The philosophy and the discipline of nonviolence tend to tell us that you should not get laws and receive despair, that you should be hopeful. You have to pick yourself up and continue to move. In a remarkable display of LBJ's enduring ability to speak across generations and to bring people together behind a common cause, we also had four presidents representing both political parties on our stage during those days. Our guests were Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, as well as Barack Obama, then in his sixth year in office. The story of America is a story of progress. And that's true because of men like President Lyndon Baines Johnson. In so many ways, he embodied America with all our gifts and all our flaws. This man, weaned in a world full of racial hatred, somehow found within himself the ability to connect his experience with the brown child in a small Texas town. As powerful as he became in that Oval Office, he understood then, he understood what it meant to be on the outside. And he believed that their plight was his plight, too. Lyndon Johnson's achievements in civil rights, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, deserve celebration every day. But for a short time in 2014, they commanded center stage in a truly memorable way.